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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Managing Director of National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), George Moghalu, has assured House of Representatives Committee on Transportation of the plans by the agency to prevent incessant mishaps in the country’s waterways.
Moghalu, who gave the assurance when the committee visited the agency’s Abuja office on Monday, on an oversight function, blamed the accidents on the waterways on human error by the boat operators.
He said: “The effort and plans of the National Assembly to lay strong emphasis on the need to develop the waterways sector is a commendable one. The potentials in the blue economy, if properly harnessed will be so massive that we won’t be talking about oil again.
“We can’t talk about mass transit scheme without talking about water transportation. There is a lot of movement on our waterways. We have over 8530 kilometres of free coastal lines in the country and developed, it will be beneficial and impact positively on the economy.
“If half of what has been deployed into road transportation in terms of resources is channeled to water transportation, we won’t be where we are today.
“We are doing everything to ensure that we prevent water transportation accidents including following due process to ensure proper regulation. We are very unhappy over road mishap, but a good percentage of the accidents on our waterways were consequences of human error, especially overloading and bad weather.
“In some instances, we provide them with life jackets, but they won’t wear. They told me that they are fishes inside the water, but I have been constantly educating them that even fishes do die in water. There are situations where a boat designed to carry 50 passengers end up carrying 255 passengers.
“We have consistently tried to overcome them by strict regulations and engaging more people like local merchants but one issue very critical in this your assignment is that there is every need to open up channels.
“In NIWA today, we do what we call maintenance dredging to ensure all year round navigable. But there us need for capital dredging. It was done sometimes in 2010, 2013 to 2015, long before I came. There is need for it to be done again. But, it is not a tea party.
“We are now involving private experts through a PPP arrangement. However, if we can get the resources, we can deploy them to productive channels. God has given us waterways but it I left for us to maintain them,” he said.
Earlier, the committee chairman, Afam Victor Ogene, had expressed concerns that the agency was underutilised in the face of the transportation difficulties Nigerians are going through after the removal of fuel subsidy.
According to him; “we think that NIWA should be a critical beneficiary of any further mass transportation scheme, in terms of regulating even ferrying services. Every now and then, we hear of boat accident. If it is not happening in Adamawa, it is happening in Niger, Lokoja, Rivers and the likes.
“I think that a well regulated ferrying transportation, it will even boost tourism beyond the movement of people. Beyond the movement of goods, people would want to travel by water once the facilities like life jackets and security.
“And with our roads getting increasingly unmotorable, waterways is one clear alternative that we need to develop. We are here to have interface with the management team of NIWA.
“We are meant to submit an interim report and this interaction will be part of that report before we into the next phase of the assignment which will entail a more technical aspect and presentation of the main report, which if adopted by the House will chart the way for a more enduring mass transit scheme for the country,” he said.
