Imminent restructuring looms at NIMASA

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is concluding plans to restructure its organisation following series of complains about low performance standards envisaged by maritime stakeholders, and perceived information gap between NIMASA and the stakeholders.

“In NIMASA, we are about to draft our medium term maritime growth plan, covering the period 2016 to 2018 and 2019, for three years. If we like we can call it a medium-term strategy document or a medium-term business plan.

“And we thought it wise that it must be stakeholders’ led. It is not a time to talk about our history; it’s time to identify our challenges, if possible proffer solutions,” said Dakuku Peterside, director-general, NIMASA, at a maritime stakeholders’ forum in Lagos on Monday.

Speaking at the forum with the theme: Repositioning the Maritime Sector for Greater Impact, Peterside said NIMASA was about to embark on a comprehensive structural, cultural and performance reforms, as “we are looking at the possibility of changing the structure, if we correct the structure; we know that so many things will fall in place.”

Raymond Omatseye, former NIMASA director-general, in his contributions to the new roadmap of the agency, said NIMASA was only a continuation of National Maritime Authority (NMA), saying NIMASA needed to change; “what has happened is that the structure of NMA is what is being operated in NIMASA.

“The original structure of NIMASA has not been done, so that is one thing you need to look at quickly. Once you get that right, the issue of professionalism, job description, job training, engineering, and all those things would be sorted out naturally because everybody now has a clear cut career path.”

According to the former director-general, when NIMASA was going to be created, there was a report by Aurthur Nzewi. “The Nzewi report was what NIMASA was supposed to be, because that was the roadmap I used. I didn’t invent any new roadmap. What I did was dust it and started implementing the report. If you can lay your hands on that report, it will help you because there is already a plan on how NIMASA should be now and in the future,” he advised.

All complaints, observations and suggestions made by stakeholders at the forum agreed that NIMASA needed a total overhaul for it to perform effectively and achieve its mandate.