Analyses

Jamoh’s three years in office: Achievements, Prospects, Projections

Bashir Jamoh, DG, NIMASA

Today marks the third year when Dr Bashir Jamoh was appointed as the Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency(NIMASA).

During these eventful years, Nigeria’s maritime industry has witnessed astronomical growth and quantum development which has earned the country international recognition and goodwill.

In this comprehensive profile of the administration of the Kaduna State-born technocrat in NIMASA, theeyewitnessnews reporter takes a cursory look at the achievements, prospects and projections of the agency to make the industry more robust for efficiency, investments and accelerated growth.

The Mandate

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) was established by an Act of Parliament (The NIMASA Act 2007) with two cardinal objectives, namely;

To Regulate and Promote Maritime Safety, Security, Marine Pollution and Maritime Labour.
To promote the development of Indigenous Commercial Shipping in International and Coastal Shipping Trade

The Agency derives its mandate from four Acts of the National Assembly. These are NIMASA Act, 2007, Cabotage Act, 2003, Merchant Shipping Act, 2007 and SPOMO Act, 2019.

VISION

To be the leading maritime administration in Africa advancing Nigeria’s global maritime goals

MISSION

To achieve and sustain safe, secure shipping, cleaner oceans and enhanced maritime capacity in line with global best practices towards Nigeria’s economic development

OUR CORE VALUES

C – COMMITMENT

A – ACCOUNTABILITY

P – PROFESSIONALISM

I – INTEGRITY

T – TEAMWORK

E – EXCELLENCE

L – LEADERSHIP

D – DISCIPLINE

OUR PERFORMANCE TRIPOD

MARITIME SECURITY S1:

Security of the Maritime Domain is very critical to the day-to-day operation of the sector. Security helps to boost investors’ confidence; hence, the following key accomplishments are under the current dispensation.

Signing into law of the SPOMO Act by Mr. President
The launch of the Deep Blue Project
Significant Reduction in Piracy and Kidnappings
Arrests and Successful Prosecution of Criminals
Leadership of Regional Maritime Collaboration Forum to tackle Insecurity
Nigeria’s Removal from IBM’s Red List

AIM OF THE DEEP BLUE PROJECT

The aim of the project is to establish a sustainable architecture for improved maritime safety and security through increased monitoring and compliance enforcement within Nigeria’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), with a view to effectively tackling the challenges of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.

THE DEEP BLUE PROJECT ASSETS BREAKDOWN

Classified into 3 (three) with over 254 personnel drawn from Military and paramilitary organizations. These are; Marine, Land and Air Assets.

Marine Assets

Special Mission Vessels – 2 (DB Abuja and DB Lagos)

Fast Intervention Boats – 17

Air Assets

Special Mission Helicopters 3

Special Mission Aircrafts 2

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Land Assets

Armored Vehicles – 17

Facilities – Command, Control, Computer, Communication and Intelligence (C4i) Centre, Training Facilities (Shooting Range, C4i Training Centre etc.). Training; various training for all personnel in the deep blue project on the assets and facilities.

THE INTER-OPERABILITY OF THE DEEP BLUE ASSETS

Effective implementation of the Deep Blue Project contributed to the reduction in piracy cases with only one piracy case as of May 2022, 6 cases in 2021 from 35 cases in 2020 and 2019 respectively

OUR PERFORMANCE TRIPOD

MARITIME SAFETY S2:

The Agency observed that shipping is critical to global trade, yet it is the most vulnerable in terms of safety. This explains the reason the IMO (International Maritime Organization) adopted the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention to ensure the safety of those involved.

Consequently, empowered by enabling legislations, NIMASA takes this as a critical aspect of its job to ensure safety of ships and those on board, through proper enforcement of maritime safety conventions.

ACHIEVEMENT AND INITIATIVES

OUR PERFORMANCE TRIPOD

SHIPPING DEVELOPMENT S3

The critical aspect of shipping development encompasses fleet expansion, shipbuilding and ship repairs. Shipping is responsible for over 90 percent of international transportation of goods that sustain the global supply chain, which is a significant component of the global economy, enhancing imports and exports of goods and services.

NIMASA is poised to advance shipping by ensuring a conducive environment for commercial shipping and encouraging more indigenous participation in the global shipping trade.

NSDP BREAKDOWN AS AT OCTOBER 2021

WASTE TO WEALTH PROGRAMME / EMPLOYMENT GENERATION – 1,190 MARINE LITTER MARSHALS

The Making of Nigeria’s Blue Economy Strategic Document

Vice President His Excellency Yemi Osinbajo will Chair the Expanded Committee on the Blue Economy Strategy Development and its Implementation Task Team.
The Federal Ministry of Transportation under the leadership of the Honourable Minister for Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Amaechi
Federal Ministry of Transportation as the Secretariat

BLUE ECONOMY AND LITTORAL STATES ENGAGEMENT

CABOTAGE VESSEL FINANCING FUND (CVFF) – STATUS OF DELIVERY

Presidential approval was granted for disbursement.

Primary lending institutions appointed.

Disbursement is likely second quarter of 2023.

MARITIME SAFETY

The Federal Executive Council, at the end of the last quarter of 2021, approved the wreck removals from the Badagry axis up to the Tincan Island project has gone

very far.

Again, in the first quarter of 2022, the Federal Executive Council approved the removal of the entire wrecks also in the other zones of Nigeria, comprising the Western zone with headquarters in Lagos, Eastern zone headquarters in Port Harcourt, and then the central Zone headquarters in Warri. All these projects have achieved major milestones.

We engaged the Nigerian Navy Naval Dockyard in Lagos to repair our operational vessels, Millennia 1 and Millennium 2. Today both vessels and five others are almost ready

for deployment for enforcement purposes. This will also enhance our search and rescue operation, and port and flag state administration amongst others.

In other to attend to the emergencies that may occur after Search and Rescue operations, the Agency has built two brand new Search and Base clinics of international standard at Azare Crescent, Apapa and Kirikiri. We are hopeful to commission it soon. The hospital is not for NIMASA or Nigeria, but for the original Regional States, NIMASA is in charge of nine countries in terms of Search and Rescue. The hospital is of high international standard, we hope to treat all calibers of patients locally, and internationally, with the state-of-the-art equipment the facility will possess, when completed.

In the area of our Flag and Port State Administration, at the inception of the administration, there was no single vessel for enforcement. Today, we have built seven brand new bulletproof boats and we expect them to have completed the building. They are being built in Spain, and we are hoping that before the end of March, we will receive and commission the vessel.

As soon as the vessels are commissioned, there will be enhanced enforcement performance; and we plan to divide the use of the vessels; not only in Lagos but also in other zones of the Agency. All these will cater for the issue of safety.

MARITIME SECURITY

Before 2019, we do not have law, separate law that tried these offenders and criminals that we arrest those involved in piracy and kidnapping.

Therefore, we are trying to get this formal act Suppression of Piracy and other Maritime Related Offences (SPOMO) Act signed by Mr. President in June 2019. As of today, we have secured convictions under this Act. This has also served as a deterrent to would-be criminals.

To further deter these criminalities on the waterways and make our youths gainfully employed, the Agency engaged the Marine Litter Marshals Usually;

In the area of education, the Agency introduced the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP). The Nigerian NSDP development program is a capacity development programme.

Now in order to ensure that we do not forget our own training institution in Nigeria, we have improved our interface with the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN) Oron. The Agency’s statutory funding of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria in Oron has been on point since 2020.

We have Simulators, among other state-of-the-art facilities, and the funding by NIMASA has been unhindered. This is in addition to other private maritime institutions, the private like Charkins, which are now also coming up with a lot of accreditation of diplomas and other short-term certificates that we are doing it locally, saving foreign exchange that we are having.

In addition to this initiative, the Agency created skill acquisition centres across six geopolitical zones. For the South-West we have Lagos, in the South-East we have Anambra, for South-South we have Bayelsa, in North-East, we have Maiduguri, Borno state; for North-West we have Kaduna State for North Central we have Kwara.

So all these skill acquisition centers have the capacity of training younger Nigerians on different aspects of professionalism under that. This is to help trim the number of this criminality in our own territorial waters. Records, therefore, show that from the third quarter of 2021 until date, we have never recorded one single attack in our own territorial water.

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Analyses

The National Single Window Illusion: Why phase two cannot succeed on paper

Monday Discourse with Nasiru Ibrahim

The official rollout of Phase One of the National Single Window (NSW) was heralded as a monumental leap toward a paperless, automated trade ecosystem.

On paper and within executive dashboards, the achievements are clear: the serialization of Licenses, Certificates, and Permits (LCPO), streamlined electronic manifest transmissions, and integrated risk management for primary regulators like SON and NAFDAC.

Yet, as the steering committee aggressively prepares for the imminent deployment of Phase Two, a severe operational reality check is required.

The claim that the Single Window has successfully “taken off” remains a purely administrative illusion when measured against the brutal, manual friction remaining at our terminal gates.

The core vulnerability of the current transition is the absolute failure to align digital front-end clearances with physical back-end enforcement.

Importers are successfully navigating the centralized National Single Window Portal, obtaining official electronic green lights, only to watch their consignments get trapped by manual human greed the moment the cargo hits the access roads.

Phase Two promises end-to-end electronic customs clearance, full payment digitization, and automated interoperability with the Nigeria Customs Service’s new B’Odogwu Unified Customs Management System.

However, if the federal administration continues to pour billions into software updates while leaving parallel manual check-points unpunished, Phase Two will simply become a highly expensive digital facade masking an archaic extortion regime.

True trade facilitation is not a technological achievement; it is a direct function of political will.

The integration of advanced platforms like B’Odogwu across major commands like Apapa and Tin Can proves that our regulatory arms possess the technical capability to automate. The problem is cultural and financial.

Entrenched administrative empires are deliberately preserving parallel manual structures because documentation loops, artificial delays, and manufactured compliance flags remain incredibly lucrative.

For the National Single Window to transition from a policy delusion into a genuine economic catalyst, the state must move past cosmetic celebrations.

The presidency must deploy the executive power required to completely outlaw physical interventions outside the approved digital framework and enforce severe punitive consequences for any agency chief who authorizes parallel verification processes.

Until the gate complies with the portal, the National Single Window project remains grounded.

Chief Ibrahim Nasiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja

Analyses

The National Single Window illusion: Why phase two is dead on arrival

Chief Nasiru Ibrahim

Tomorrow on Monday Discourse with Nasiru Ibrahim, I am dropping part three of my maritime audit, ‘The Single Window Illusion: Why Phase Two is Already Grounded.

For months, our regulatory class has hidden behind the glossy public relations of automated portals, celebrating the ‘take-off’ of Phase One.

But a cold look at the raw data reveals a terrifying truth: we are running a digitised facade over a broken, manual rent-seeking ecosystem.

Tomorrow , I shall be exposing the massive operational disconnect between the new B’Odogwu Customs System and the brutal, manual greed at the terminal gates.

You cannot claim to master trade velocity when parallel checkpoints, erratic human intervention, and bridge shakedowns are hardcoded into the Apapa corridor.

Tomorrow, we strip away the illusions and confront the structural arithmetic holding our supply chains hostage.

Lock your dials on this platform. The clock is ticking.

Analyses

Dual clearing: The secret racket killing Single Window

Monday Discourse with Nasiru Ibrahim

Following my recent exposure of the manual shakedowns trapping the National Single Window, we must now look at the deeper, institutional civil war rendering this multi-billion naira portal useless.

True port modernization is measured by the complete eradication of manual physical interventions, not by the mere proliferation of web portals.

As Nigeria aggressively pushes the operational boundaries of its digital trade infrastructure to meet international benchmarks, an objective policy audit reveals a glaring structural disconnect.

The ongoing implementation strategy focuses almost entirely on software acquisition and portal integration while completely ignoring the brutal institutional resistance embedded within the primary regulatory agencies.

This critical blind spot is turning a premier trade facilitation tool into a redundant administrative layer.

The core operational trap of the current framework is the deliberate preservation of parallel manual verification structures.

For a single window system to function optimally, every participating agency—including the Nigeria Customs Service, NAFDAC, SON, and the NDLEA—must entirely surrender their independent, siloed databases to a unified digital risk assessment engine.

Instead, what obtains across Nigerian maritime gateways is an absurd system of dual processing.

An importer clears his cargo through the centralized digital portal and receives an official electronic release, only to encounter multiple physical enforcement teams, specialized task forces, and roaming federal operations units stationed just meters outside the terminal gates, demanding a manual re-examination of the exact same consignment.

This structural contradiction completely defeats the entire purpose of trade facilitation.

It exposes the fact that the primary resistance to port automation is not technological, but cultural and financial.

The manual desk architecture remains incredibly lucrative for a network of entrenched interests who profit directly from artificial delays, manufactured non-compliance flags, and complex documentation loops.

By allowing these parallel manual structures to co-exist with the digital portal, policymakers have effectively trapped the maritime industry in a loop of perpetual inefficiency.

The digital dashboard shows a green light of completion, but the physical reality on the Port access roads remains gridlocked by manual human greed, where electronic clearances are routinely ignored in favour of physical bargaining.

For the National Single Window to transition from an institutional delusion into a genuine economic catalyst, the federal administration must deploy the political will to completely outlaw physical interventions and dismantle the rogue checkpoints that neutralize the power of digital trade.

We must move past the cosmetic celebrations of launching new portals and confront the administrative empires actively sabotaging the ease of doing business.

The government must establish strict punitive consequences for any agency chief who authorizes parallel verification processes outside the approved digital framework.

Until the state enforces absolute inter-agency data integration and aggressively punishes units running parallel manual rackets, the single window will remain an expensive digital facade masking an archaic, paper-based extortion regime.

Chief Ibrahim Nasiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja