The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the Maritime and Ports Authority of Singapore have held a bilateral meeting to seek areas of collaboration between the two maritime regulators at the sidelines of the Maritime Regulators Forum holding in Singapore.
The Director General of NIMASA, Dr. Dakuku Peterside met with his counterpart at the Maritime and Ports Authority (MPA) of Singapore, Mr. Andrew Tan where they pledged to collaborate for the benefit of both countries.
Dr. Peterside told Mr. Tan that Nigeria has huge maritime potentials that have remained untapped and also called on Singapore investors to take advantage of the reforms in Nigeria’s maritime sector to invest in the country.
He also requested partnership with the Singaporean authorities in various areas including technology acquisition for monitoring of the waterways, capacity building of personnel, support to upgrade maritime infrastructure a well as acquisition of more ocean going vessels for indigenous operators.
Dr. Peterside assured Singapore investors and the global community of NIMASA’s commitment to effectively enforce all IMO instruments as well as build the requisite capacity of personnel and infrastructure for the execution of its mandate. He said clean and safe oceans and security of ships operating in Nigerian waters remain a top priority.
Meanwhile, Mr. Andrew Tan described Nigeria as the new destination for future maritime investments and he expressed surprise that there was no institutional relationship between Nigeria and Singapore despite the fact that Singapore is the second busiest and first trans-shipment port in the world and Nigeria a major maritime hub in West and central Africa.
The MPA Chief Executive further suggested that Nigeria could benefit from Singapore’s well developed and excess maritime capacity while Singapore can benefit from Nigeria’s huge market. Therefore, he invited NIMASA to take advantage of the several programmes available in MPA Academy of Singapore to build capacity of its personnel while also leveraging on Singapore’s ship building and maintenance expertise to get many Nigeria maritime players own their own vessels.
