The League of Maritime Editors this morning urged President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene in the ongoing leadership tussle among Executive Directors of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA).

The President, League of Maritime Editors, Mr Ovie Edomi, made the plea in a statement made available to newsmen in Lagos.

He said: “Consequently, we call for the abolition of the Executive Director’s (EDs) position, a political post that has helped in entrenching corruption and conflict in the system.

“We equally call for the appointment of a NIMASA-groomed director-general, who is a maritime professional that understands the policy direction of the agency.

“By moral and professional standards, they are equally not qualified because all the EDs are part of the old order.

“Consequently, the League of Maritime Editors calls on President Buhari to note that the nation’s maritime potential has the capacity to generate three times what the nation derives from oil.

“The agency (NIMASA) can generate an estimated revenue of over N8 trillion annually, but NIMASA has done very little to develop indigenous shipping through the Cabotage Act.”

Edomi described Cabotage Act as a policy which other maritime nations had used effectively to develop indigenous shipping and national carriers.

According to him, for over 10 years since Nigeria commenced the implementation of the Cabotage Act, no shipping company has benefitted from the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund.

“Yet,” he said, “the nation’s maritime administration agency says it is developing shipping. The media knows this and some of them have been reported in the past, but because impunity was the name of the game, nothing happened.

“Now, President Muhammadu Buhari has come with a change that is sure to take the maritime sector out of the woods. What the maritime sector needs are maritime experts who will give NIMASA a real sense of direction.

“That way, international institutions like International Maritime Organisation, World Trade Organisation, World Maritime University, and other maritime nations, would take us very seriously.

“To do anything less at a time that Nigeria is in the eye of the world, is totally unacceptable to maritime journalists, particularly, the League of Maritime Editors.”

The statement urged Buhari to cancel the positions of EDs in NIMASA and appoint a Chief Executive Officer, who is a maritime expert, from any part of the country, to carry out the mandate of the agency. (NAN)

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