Okey Ibeke

One of the major issues that are likely to occupy the mind of the newly inaugurated Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is how to return Nigeria to Category C of the IMO Council seat. Nigeria’s four consecutive attempts to get re-elected into the Council ended in failures, the last being the last November loss.

To regain the seat, it is pertinent that the new leadership in NIMASA should do things differently. It must adopt a different approach to the IMO Council seat. This different approach must entail ensuring that all the IMO regulations, stipulations, directives and expectations are satisfied in order to earn the deserved recognition, and thereby prepare the country to bid and get elected into the Council without much ado.

Industry operators are optimistic that with NIMASA being led by a person adjudged to be a true professional, someone who has had over three decades of experience of the industry, things will be done differently, and in line with the core mandate of the agency. For many years, maritime industry stakeholders have been yearning for a maritime professional or technocrat, “a home boy” who knows the nitty-gritty of the problems besetting the nation’s maritime sector and what must be done to remedy them, in order for Nigeria to take up its position in the comity of nations. Now they have such a person in Bashir Jamoh. With Jamoh leading the apex maritime regulatory agency, they expect that all the mistakes, negligence and haphazard implementation of statutory responsibilities would be swiftly redressed.

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