A former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Temisan Omatseye has said that the agency will not be able to fulfil its mandate until it is weaned of political interference.
Speaking exclusively with SHIPS & PORTS, Omatseye blamed the poor implementation of the agency’s mandate on “politics”.
“NIMASA should be a regulator of the industry not a platform for political gameplay. The Act that created the agency clearly spelt out its roles which span from maintaining maritime safety, administration of ship registration and licensing to controlling any sort of pollution at the port among other roles. All these responsibilities require professionalism and it must be sacrilegiously observed for them to yield expected results.
“The truth of the matter is that in every institution, politics is played there but it should not be sacrificed for professionalism as far as NIMASA is concerned. Even though by the influence of some politicians’ interest in filing their candidates to head the agency, there should be very strong set goals, process, clear cut job description and qualification that should be readily available to meet up with.
“Either the man or woman coming in is a politician or not, he should meet up with some basic requirements that no political influence can bend. This is the only path NIMASA can follow to grow and produce the expected result,” Omatseye said.