MORE facts have emerged on why Nigeria lost in its bid to get re-elected into the Category C of the just concluded International Maritime Organisation (IMO) council election recently held in London.
Speaking on the sidelines of the G7++Friends of the Gulf of the Guinea Group which held in Lagos on Monday, Director General, Nigerian Maritime Administration of Safety Agency (NIMASA) Dakuku Peterside said that increase in pirates attack in the nation’s territorial waters and the general impression that Nigeria was not doing enough to tackle the challenge was a major setback on why Nigeria lost in its quest to get re- elected into the council.
He also attributed the failure of Nigeria at the IMO elections to the delay in budgetary provisions from the Federal Executive Council which he said affected early preparations.
According to him, “We cannot wakeup as a country and say we are going to contest IMO elections. The rules of engagement require that we get the approval of the Federal Executive Council and that takes a process. After we got the approval, there are also budgetary processes to go through. All of these take time and affected our early preparation.
“We started late and Nigeria did not spend as much as other countries. Before, whenever Nigeria bids for elections in IMO, we will go from country to country. But this time, we are just coming out of recession and we did not think it is wise to send delegation from country to country.
“If we had got the commitment of the nation early before other nations got their commitment, the outcome will have been different. We are going to start preparation for the biannual election now.
“The choice of who get elected into the council is actually a democratic process. We presented ourselves but a few things were not tidied up which has to do with administrative processes and our campaign was not as portent as it should have been,”
“I cannot deny the fact that the issue of piracy may have had some impact on the elections. Our colleagues did not have much information about what we were doing to tackle piracy and there was a general impression that Nigeria was not doing enough to tackle the issue of piracy,”
Dakuku said contrary to media reports, only N100million was spent by the three delegations that attended the IMO elections.
On reported cases of pirate activities on the nation’s territorial waters, Dakuku said Nigeria is being misrepresented by figures put up by the International Maritime Bureau even as he explained that there is difference between piracy and other forms of maritime crimes.
“We have noticed that everything that happened within the gulf of guinea is referred to as piracy even when there is a kidnapped within our inland waterways; it is referred to as piracy. We have taken this up with the international maritime bureau that we have been misrepresented.
“There is difference between piracy and other forms of maritime crimes. They classify everything as cases of piracy instead of trying to do a distinction between other forms of piracy,” he said.
Dakuku explained that the G7 Friends of the Gulf of the Guinea Group is one of the international initiatives Nigeria is leveraging on to strengthen the fight against piracy and other criminal activities on the sea.
“What you are seeing now is an international dimension of the fight against piracy and maritime crime which is a new strategy. G7 is an initiative of the group towards finding lasting solution to the issues of security in the gulf of guinea.
“For the first time, they decided to take the program outside the continent of Europe and the lot fell on Nigeria because they think the gulf of guinea suffers the peculiar problem and criminal activities on sea.