Minister says FG might scrap NIMASA

monjola sotubo

January 20, 2016 12:21 PM

Amaechi made the disclosure on Tuesday, January 19, 2016, during a meeting with the Senate Committee on Marine Transport.

Rotimi Amaechi

Minister for Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has said that the federal government might be forced to scrap the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) if it doesn’t fulfill the purpose for which it was created.

“Currently, the way NIMASA is, if you look at it very well, it was worse in the last administration. It was as if it was established just for the purpose of collecting money and nothing more. What we need to do is to ensure that NIMASA discharges its core responsibilities,” the minister said.

“If NIMASA failed to outsource its core responsibility, then it has no business existing. If it is just to collect money from individuals, anybody can do that. We can hire a tax collector to collect money from maritime operators on behalf of Federal Ministry of Transportation.

“So it is either NIMASA sits up and carries out its own responsibility or we come to the National Assembly to repeal the Act setting it up and allow the department of marine security in the Ministry of Transportation to discharge the responsibility currently being discharged by NIMASA.

“We are not going ahead with the university project proposed by NIMASA because we have a an institution in Oron, we have Nigeria Institute of Transport Technology, Zaria, and we have the Nigerian College of Aviation in Zaria which we could upgrade to a university status and NIMASA is proposing to build a new one.

“Who will attend the university? How many parents will allow their children to go to such place where it proposes to site the university? What is the aim of the university that we cannot achieve in Oron where they have all the necessary infrastructure?

“I don’t think we are proceeding with the university being proposed by NIMASA because it is a waste of resources, and unfortunately, a lot of money had already been released for the university project hence there is no structure on ground but just the feasibility study.

“Whoever is holding on to the money should better return it. The Chinese company contracted confirmed that only the feasibility study was in place.

“In fact there is a particular man who collected N32 billion and left the country. I don’t think that the federal government needed to release N52 billion to investors in the maritime industry.

“The responsibility of NIMASA is to protect Nigeria’s water ways but it has out-sourced its responsibility to a private firm, Global west, which Tompolo has interest in.

“We need to first address the contract of global west with NIMASA. I was extremely disappointed NIMASA made N63 billion annually and this money is not remitted to the government coffers. At the moment, N53 billion is at Treasury Single Account (TSA) of NIMASA,” Amaechi said.

The minister was referring to former militant, Government “Tompolo” Ekpemupolo who has been accused of defrauding NIMASA alongside the agency’s former Director General, Patrick Ziakede Akpobolokemi.

monjola sotubo