The management of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is billed to hold an emergency meeting over an abandoned floating dock on the Sapele River at the Nigerian Naval Engineering College jetty.
An abandoned floating dock rotting away on what is supposed to be jetty infrastructure of the Nigerian Naval Engineering College, Sapele has constituted an economic menace, environmental hazard and a source of anxiety for the college’s management.
During his tour of the NIMASA Central Zone yesterday, the Director-General of the Agency, Dr Peterside Dakuku met briefly with the executive directors who were also on the tour with him over the floating dock.
He told journalists that the agency had decided to have an emergency meeting on Friday to deliberate and come up with an action plan to take concerning the floating dock.
He explained that the floating dock was abandoned by its owners in Lagos, but due to the environmental issues it presented, it was moved to Sapele where it is now.
He said, “We had problems with the floating dock, but needed to see for ourselves. Now we have seen that it has become a huge problem around here and we must do something urgent about it
“So, we are going to have an emergency management meeting on Friday to resolve the issues around it. We have seen the damage on it and the damage it is doing to the environment and the problems it is causing the naval engineering college.
“Being a safety agency, we must ensure safety of the waters and we need to act on this and I want to state that by next week there will be a position statement on what NIMASA intends to do about it.”
“The floating dock does not belong to NIMASA ab initio. The dock was abandoned over 10 years ago. We put up a marine notice asking that owners should come up but nobody responded. We moved it from Lagos to this place due to environmental issues.
“We also put it up for auction but stop at some point after we reconsidered it,” Peterside added.
Floating on a water draught meant to support about 8,000 metric tons, the abandoned vessel is said to be about 10,000 MT in weight even after it has been offloaded. Its cargoes, mostly metal cables are laying comatose in their rotten containers with no one claiming ownership.
NIMASA Central Zonal Coordinator, Capt Kunle Olayewola said the abandoned floating dock was causing his office sleepless nights and a lot of anxiety in taking care of it. He pleaded with the NIMASA DG to provide resources to keep it on hold while it remained on the Sapele River.
Copyright 2016 Ships & Ports Ltd. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit given to www.shipsandports.com.ng as the source.
