How presidency frustrated disbursement of N80billion Cabotage funds

By Funso Olojo

The hope of indigenous ship owners to access the much elusive Cabotage Vessel Financing Funds (CVFF) may have become forlorn as its approval was frustrated by former president Goodluck Jonathan.

Controversy has dogged the Fund which is the two per cent deductions from every Cabotage contract executed by the indigenous ship owners and set aside to empower them for effective and efficient participation in coastal trade.

The Fund is also a derivative of Cabotage regime whose implementation has become as controversial and moribund as the Fund itself.

However, the disbursement of the Fund which was structured in terms of soft loans to the beneficiaries, has become a subject of conjecture over two years after the immediate past Minister of Transport, Senator Idris Umar announced that six indigenous companies were shortlisted to assess the fund.

Since late 2012 when the names of the beneficiaries were announced, none of them has been able to access the mysterious Fund till the end of the Jonathan administration.

However, investigation revealed that it was former President Jonathan who threw the spanners into the works of the ambition of the agitated beneficiaries to collect the Funds.

According to the guiding laws of the Cabotage regime, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency(NIMASA) has the statutory powers to administer the Fund through four Primary Lending Institutions(PLI) to safe guard the money.

The Minister of Transport has the final approving powers to disburse the fund.

NIMASA painstakingly screened and selected four banks, namely Sky Bank, Fidelity Bank, Diamond and Sterling banks that would manage the funds. Similarly, the agency screened scores of applications from the interested indigenous ship owners and selected six successful ones which were adjudged to have met the stiff criteria.

NIMASA sent these recommendations to the then Minister of Transport, Idris Umar who has the statutory powers to approve the disbursement of the money to the beneficiaries.

But curiously, Senator Umar took the file to former President Jonathan for vetting.

It was gathered that the sheer amount of the amount involved may have alarmed the former president who invited the States Security Service(SSS) to screen the six beneficiaries.

Engr. Greg Ogbeifun, the Managing Director of Starzs Marine and Engineering Limited, one of the shortlisted companies to access the Fund, confirmed the screening by the SSS.

‘’NIMASA did its job. The banks did their own job too and according to the guidelines for disbursement, recommendations were made to the Honourable Minister.

‘’The Act gives the Minister the right at that point to give approval for disbursement. He does not need to take it beyond that point.

‘’But for reasons best known to him, he carried the file to Mr President(Jonathan) who sent the file to the SSS for screening .

‘’Jonathan had good intentions to want the beneficiaries screened, and rightly so, to ensure that due process was followed and the Fund did not go the way of its predecessor, SBSAF.

‘’Thereafter, the SSS invited us to Abuja for screening and our biometrics were taken.

‘’That was the last we had of CVFF till the exit of President Jonathan.’’, the Ship owner declared.

It was learnt that the frenzy which attended the 2015 General elections completely drowned the file of the CVFF which some analysts claimed may be resting in one of the closets at the former President Jonathan office, gathering dust, until he left.

Other industry commentators alleged that the Fund, for which conflicting figures of N50 billion, N60 Billion and N80 billion are being bandied, may have got caught up in the electoral spending spree of the last administration.

NIMASA management has however on several occasions absolved itself of the blame over the intractable delay in the disbursement of the Fund.

The agency has declared that it has no statutory powers to disburse the funds without the approval of the Minister who is the final approving authority.

However, Senator Umar, curiously, decided to hand over the matter to the out-gone president.

Analysts contended that unless the present administration of President Buhari revisits the CVFF prolonged issue, the beleaguered army of 78 registered indigenous shipping companies in Nigeria whose rank has been depleted by 90 per cent, may as well kiss the elusive CVFF good bye.