Ship owners initiate probe into alleged missing $300 million Cabotage fund

The Nigerian Shipowners Association (NISA) has called for investigation into the more than $300 million accrued into the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) from 2008 and 2015, claimed to have been missing.

The CVFF, which is derived from 2 percent contribution from contracts awarded to indigenous owned ships under the Cabotage regime, was designed to enable indigenous shipping firms build shipping capacity by acquiring adequate tonnage to be able to participate in coastal trade, currently dominated by foreign owned ships.

CVFF, which was set up for the actualisation of the provisions of the Coastal and Inland Shipping Act (Cabotage Act of 2003), is yet to be disbursed to ship owners to enable them invest into ship acquisition and other maritime related projects.

Aminu Umar, president of NISA, who spoke with journalists shortly after the association’s annual general meeting held in Lagos recently, said a 5-man committee has been set up by NISA to commence investigation into the fund, which had remained unaccounted for.

He said that the committee is expected to unravel the facts behind the alleged missing fund in order to ensure that those, who mismanaged the fund, were duly punished.

“Cabotage Fund has been on for over 10 years. Today, it is said that the CVFF in the bank is the money that was contributed from 2015 till date, meaning that the contributions before 2015, has not been accounted for. We know that there is presently about $150 million in the fund but we need to find out what happened to the ones before 2015,” Umar said.

Continuing, he said: “We don’t know if what was contributed in the past is more than $300 million; we are just estimating that it will be more than $300 million. If within three years, the CVFF has come up to over $160 million, then we expect 2015 backward, which is nothing less than six or seven years.

According to him, NISA has set up a committee to look into the allegation because the association will make a presentation to the management of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), the custodian of the fund.

“We will write to the Minister of Transportation for him to also look into the issue and brief us because the fund belongs to members. If the fund was not spent according to the provisions of Cabotage Act, then, there are government agencies that will investigate and prosecute those responsible,” he added.

Umar, who stated that Nigerian ship owners want accountability and to know how the money was spent, said that if the fund was not properly spent in line with the Act that ship owners will government intervention.

He however called for the immediate disbursement of the remaining money in the CVFF coffers, describing it as an immediate solution to aid the operations of indigenous ship owners.

AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE