Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has declared its intention to work in partnership with the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) in the fight against piracy and other crimes in the country’s waterways.
Director-General of NIMASA, Dr. Bashir Jamoh, made this known in a statement in Lagos on Sunday. Jamoh, during a working visit to the interim Sole Administrator of PAP, Col. Milland Dixon Dikio (rtd.) underscored the importance of collaboration among relevant agencies and communities in the quest for maritime security.
“We should be working together in partnership to help us appreciate and evaluate the challenges from our various perspectives and collectively come up with solutions that will work for all of us, and the country at large. Security problems, more often than not have local content.
“So, as the country’s maritime regulatory agency, we want to partner the amnesty programme, which interfaces with the littoral communities to nip the security challenges in the bud and stand our nation in good stead for the optimisation of our huge maritime resources.
“We cannot proffer solutions to the issues and crisis in the Niger Delta without the collaboration of the Presidential Amnesty Programme,” the statement quoted Jamoh as saying.
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The director-general also noted that a maritime intelligence unit was recently established by NIMASA to help in the identification of early warning signs in order to prevent security breaches in the littoral areas.
He revealed that many of the assets being installed and deployed under the Integrated National Security and Waterways Protection Infrastructure (the Deep Blue Project) had intelligence gathering capabilities through air, land and sea surveillance.
Jamoh pointed out that NIMASA was planning to introduce educational, entrepreneurship training, and skills acquisition programmes in the areas of fishing, clearing and forwarding as well as legal bunkering for people in the coastal communities. This he said, is a way of empowering them and discouraging criminal tendencies.
Responding, Dikio commended Jamoh for his vision and commitment to maritime security and his passion for inter-agency coordination and collaboration in the security of Nigeria’s maritime environment.
He said that detecting the early warning signs and engaging early responses to prevent security challenges at their early stages would be vigorously pursued. The PAP boss expressed the willingness of his agency to partner NIMASA, especially in the empowerment of the locals and suggested that the people’s knowledge of the local communities should be leveraged in the area of information gathering.
Dikio advised that the training programme being planned by NIMASA should target subjects relevant to the Niger Delta in order to impact them directly and get to the root of the problem. He also suggested the appointment of nodal officers from PAP and NIMASA to interface and harmonise action points to fast-track the actualisation of the partnership for the overall good of the maritime sector.
