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Armed soldiers led by officers of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) on Wednesday swooped on some jetties, shutting them down without prior notice.
According to Maritime First newspaper, two jetties were shut down in Lagos and another at Onne under questionable circumstances, igniting mixed reactions, with some tasking the media to look in-between the lines, if the adopted approach does not indicate some premeditated gestures!
“Ask them to show you the correspondences exchanged, if any, before they brought in soldiers to shut down these jetties”, a stakeholder, Tony Emeordi, was quoted as saying.
Before then, a statement issued by the agency image maker, Hajia Lami Tumaka indicated that a NIMASA troop had shut down the Heyden Petroleum Jetty Ijora Lagos; Waziri Jetty, Dockyard Road Apapa Lagos and Starz Marine Shipyard Limited Onne in Rivers State, over non-conformity with the prescriptions of the International Ship and Port Facilities Security (ISPS) code.
“The media is sitting tight. The media is sleeping. You guys are not asking the right questions. Your job is not to write press statements!”, Emeordi emphasized, echoing an earlier respondent, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, saying he is convinced that the agency was merely trying to convince the visiting team of US Coast Guard that the agency was anything serious about delivering on the ISPS mandate.
“Don’t they see fisher men with their nets hovering over and around foreign vessels on daily basis here at Apapa and the Tin Can Island Port? What have they done? Or is that not an open contravention of the ISPS code?”, he asked, saying the media should open its eyes, and note, whether or not, the agency was playing by the rules of the thumb!
Investigation by the MARITIME FIRST showed that management and most decision takers of the shut jetties never had much deliberations, until the agency arrived with soldiers, to shut their facilities down.
Meanwhile, the agency on Wednesday said it had shut down the Heyden Petroleum Jetty Ijora Lagos; Waziri Jetty, Dockyard Road Apapa Lagos and Starz Marine Shipyard Limited Onne in Rivers State.
“These facilities have persistently failed to comply with the ISPS code necessitating their closure in order to forestall a situation where security breaches in such facilities will negatively impact the compliant ones”, Hajia Tumaka indicated in a statement.
“These closures are in exercise of the Agency’s powers in line with provisions of Part VIII of the ISPS Code Implementation Regulations 2014 under which the facilities were adjudged to be non-compliant despite repeated warnings to remedy the deficiencies.
“While hosting a pre-assessment team from the United States Coast Guard (USCG) recently, the Director General of NIMASA, Dr. Dakuku Peterside expressed the determination of the Agency to enforce the code saying that “ultimately all of us are working for a common purpose, a safer world through safety and security of the maritime sub sector. If we fix our different corners of the earth, the whole world will be safer for everybody. And so no effort should be spared in trying to guarantee safety and security”, Tumaka concluded.