Fidelia Okafor.

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA has acquired a modular floating dockyard that would save the Nigerian government $100 million annually and $1bn in ten years.

The Director General of the agency, Dr Dakuku Peterside, who stated this at a press conference in Lagos, said the modular floating dockyard was the fifth largest in Africa.

Peterside said the $1 billion would be a direct saving from the dry docking of vessels operating in Nigeria, which he stated were mostly done outside the country.

He added that it was the desire of NIMASA to partner with the private sector to run the dockyard.

The Nimasa boss also announced that the agency plans to introduce Cost Insurance and Freight (CIF) to enable Nigerians lift the country’s crude oil.

According to him, “one major factor that edges Nigerians out in the ‘affreightment’ of Nigerian cargo, especially crude oil lifting, is the prevalent Free On Board (FOB) trade term”.

” As you know, Nigeria as a nation has no control in the distribution of its crude oil with respect to carriage, insurance and other ancillary services. Under a CIF arrangement, the tide would change in favour of our indigenous operators. Therefore, we are joining forces with well-meaning Nigerians to move for the change of trade term from FOB to CIF to reasonably involve our indigenous operators in Nigerian cargo affreightment,” he said.

It will not only give distribution control of the country’s hydrocarbon resources to Nigerians, “but would also enable us to empower our people through cargo lifting and meaningful participation in the entire value chain of our export goods. As you are aware, CIF will enable Nigerians participate in cargo lifting, cargo insurance, create job for our teeming cadets and other ancillary economic and security derivatives,” he said.

The plans are in top gear to reach out to relevant agencies of government and very soon, we shall do an executive memorandum to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) for consideration and approval.”

He stated that the agency had embarked on empowerment programmes through indigenous ship owners.

“Conscious of our mandate-to promote the development of indigenous commercial shipping in international and coastal shipping trade, we are poised, more than ever, to achieving this obligation. We understand it requires a great deal of capacity building, especially human, infrastructural and tonnage capacities of our indigenous shipping operators.

We have reviewed the participation of Nigerians in the industry and are not satisfied with the outcome. The summary of our findings reveals a very low indigenous participation in international commercial shipping trade in Nigeria. As far-fetched as it sounds, there are no Nigerian Flagged Ocean-going vessels known to us.

“In the course of our review also, we observed the salience of cargo availability to the commercial fortunes of a ship owner/operator and to our national tonnage growth. We noted also that commercial shipping will less likely develop without conscious, proactive, well -structured and monitored government intervention as is done in other sectors,” he stated.

The NIMASA boss added that one area of such intervention is urgently needed is cargo availability.

Developed maritime nations, he said, have at one time or the other consciously supported, and are still supporting their indigenous operators in building their commercial shipping capacities.

“Recently, a bipartisan bill was brought before the United States Congress aimed at strengthening indigenous participation in shipping. The bill seeks to allow US flagged vessels carry up to 30 per cent of the U.S LNG as a matter of both economic importance and security concerns.

Peterside noted that plans are in top gear to use the existing enabling laws and make public cargo available for indigenous shipping operators in order to improve their commercial fortunes and competitive advantage over their well-capitalized and established foreign counterparts as well as engravings Sections 36 and 37 of the NIMASA Act 2007 towards building indigenous capacities in shipping.