ISPS Code: NIMASA to raise security standards of all port facilities

Determined to improve the security of lives and goods in the nation’s ports, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has perfected plans to raise the security standards of all Nigerian ports.

This, stakeholders say, will grow business activities in the nation’s economic gateway by maintaining high level of port call by foreign flagged vessels.

The biggest problem confronting Nigerian ports in terms of security is the issue of high influx of human traffic in the port such that touts and artisans, who have no business at the port, keep flooding the port especially around the common user facilities. This poses serious security threat on lives and cargo within the port system.

Speaking in Lagos at a two-day general stakeholders’ conference on, ‘Reviving ISPS Code Implementation in Nigeria’ Patrick Akpobolokemi, director general of NIMASA, assured that the agency will vigorously pursue ISPS Code implementation by raising the security standards of all port facilities in our country and ships that bears Nigerian flags.

According to him, the effective implementation of ISPS Code will have financial implications on port facility operators, which will in the long-run, augur well for the entire maritime industry and Nigerian economy as a whole.

“The gains of a nationwide compliance with the ISPS Code are immense and serve as an anaesthetic for the short-term discomfort that our implementation agenda might cause in the interim. But the risk of non-compliance with ISPS Code is frightening given the threats our nation faces from the growing menace of global terrorism and other maritime crime,” the NIMASA boss added.

Therefore, he assured, the agency will work with the relevant stakeholders to ensure that Nigerian waterways and port facilities are safe shipping business to thrive.

Uwe Isangedighi, a representative of the National Security Adviser, who said that the global economy depends largely on shipping and port facility such that Nigeria gets 90 percent of her foreign exchange from maritime related activities, also noted that ISPS Code was developed to beef up security of the shipping business as well as the entire maritime domain.

According to him, the code will help the designated authority as well as port operators to sense security threats and to develop procedures and measures to prevent possible security threat.

He further urged NIMASA to collaborate with major national agencies at the port as well as other stakeholders to boost security at the port.

It would be recalled that the US Coast Guard gave Nigeria a 90-day ultimatum to boost maritime security, or face sanction, which by implication will ban vessels from Nigeria to call US ports.

ISPS Code until recently, was poorly managed in the nation’s maritime domain due to the political loggerheads between NIMASA and PICOMSS as regards who has the mandate to implement maritime security.