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Steve Agbota
The Director General of Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dakuku Peterside, has said that his agency is determined to end piracy on the country’s territorial waters.
Peterside said that so far the rate of piracy has reduced and gave assurance that the trend would continue as the agency moves to introduce new measures to tackle all forms of maritime crime.
Speaking to the executive members of the League of Maritime Editors and Publishers who met with him in his office, the NIMASA boss said the agency is being repositioned to play a new part in line with global best practices.
Peterside, who explained that the agency is dealing with an international audience, was of the view that this requires that the standard has to be international as nobody will assess the country with Nigerian standard.
According to him, part of this new measure is a collective fight, involving the Nigerian Navy, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and every other stakeholder in the industry , against piracy and other maritime crime.
With this measure, he pledged that the industry would continue to experience drop in maritime crime.
His words: “ The fight against piracy is a collective effort of all working in the sector, Nigerian Navy, NPA and every other stakeholder in the industry. Going forward, we will experience more drop in cases of piracy and maritime crime. I have always said it, we will do everything to tackle the albatross hanging around our neck called piracy. We have put in place a number of things to check piracy and other maritime crimes.
“Number one is that in the few days, the House of Representatives will pass the anti-piracy bill. It has gone through second reading. The House has gone through it clause by clause and it remains the final reading. It is to be passed concurrently by the Senate. And I think we have made remarkable progress in that regard. When the Bill is passed into law, it will give us the legal teeth to fight maritime crimes and piracy”.
The NIMASA DG said that the agency has been misrepresented on the deep blue sea project, which according to him “involves acquisition of critical maritime assets, boats, intervention aircraft, helicopters, command and control centre and other assets including the training of special forces to tackle maritime crime”.
