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The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), said it working hard to attain International standard certification for ship registration in the country.
According to the Director-General of NIMASA, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, the agency is putting in place the necessary building blocks for Nigeria to be the first African country to achieve a five star International Standards Certification by 2020.
Dakuku who disclosed this while receiving the report of the committee tasked with reviewing the activities and operations of the Nigerian Ship Registration Office in Laogos last week, said that the agency’s target was to have a world-class ship registry in the country.
According to him, the goal was for Nigeria to have a ship registry that will meet international certification standards and compete favourably with the best in the global maritime community.
He added: “NIMASA is working at giving Nigerians a Ship Registry that is respected across the globe and that will be attractive to ship-owners, so they can fly the Nigerian Flag. In no distant future, our ship registry will be more effective, more efficient and responsive to change, thus, meeting international standards for certification.”
He noted that the agency had already commenced the process of automating the Nigerian Ship Registry, and that from the preliminary report earlier submitted to it the diligent implementation of the findings of the committee would have a beneficial effect on the Nigerian maritime sector.
Speaking just before submitting the report, the committee chairman, Engr. Emmanuel Ilori, stated that ship registration and the effectiveness of the established processes in a country’s maritime sector operations were critical in determining the health of a national maritime administration.
Ilori stated that, “all the committee’s efforts were geared towards making the Nigerian flag globally acceptable. The committee carried out an extensive review of the Nigerian Ship Registry, took cognizance of stakeholders’ opinions and expectations, and carried out comparative analysis of the ship registration processes of some Global Registries in arriving at the report. NIMASA management should consider and implement submissions contained in the report.”
