Cabotage fund is misplaced priority without jobs —Shipowners

FUNSO OLOJO

Indigenous ship owners have dismissed the controversial Cabotage vessels Financing Funds(CVFF) as a misplaced priority by government in view of lack of jobs to execute with the vessels meant to be purchased by this loan.

Captain Niyi Labinjo, the President of Nigerian Shipowners Association(NISA) declared that having vessels without having jobs to do with them is utterly useless and of no value.

‘’Give me 1000 vessels without contract to execute with them, I will not take them’’ the NIAS boss declared.

Labinjo, who was addressing maritime journalists in Lagos on the plight of indigenous shipowners in the coastal trade, bemoaned the situation where foreigners have invaded the coastal trade meant to be the exclusive reserve of local operators under the Cabotage regime.

He disclosed that running a vessel is expensive and complicated as it has to be running everyday on dessel and with the full complement of crew members, whether there is a job to do or not.

‘’ So it will be suicidal and non- economical to keep a vessel idle without contract to execute. SO you can now see the wisdom or otherwise in the Cabotage loan for ship owners to purchase vessels but there jobs have been taken over by foreign operators’’, Labinjo declared.

He said that while foreign ships operating illegally were smiling to the banks, Nigerian shipowners were being hounded by the operatives of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC).

Labinjo said that Nigerian shipowners were deliberately being denied jobs in preference for foreign ships, adding that most of the vessels were operating without waivers.

“ Our maritime domain is infested by foreign ships despite the prohibitions in the Cabotage Act. Worst still, the foreign vessels fail to obtain waivers as required under Section 9-11 of the Cabotage Act. It is a common sight to find Phillipinos, Indians, Koreans, Pakistanis etc onboard product tankers and offshore support vessels engaged in the Nigerian Cabotage Trade. They take up the jobs reserved for the teeming young Nigerians who remained unemployed and helpless.

‘’ While the Americans , Indians, Europeans and Australians protect their Cabotage Area which I call ‘nurseries’, we in Nigeria have left the ‘gate’ to the pen opened and the hawks and hounds have gone in to wreck havoc.”, the NISA president observed.

He blamed NIMASA, Navy and NPA for watching helplessly and failure to check the foreign ships in exchange for thousands of dollars.

“While the foreign shipping companies are laughing to the banks, the Nigerian shipowners are hounded and docked by EFCC and AMCON”, he said.

He said that while Nigeria imports 1.88m litres of petroleum products monthly, the mother vessels (import vessels) stay at Cotonou/Lome offshore and small tankers do the lighterage of the products to Nigerian ports.

He disclosed that the association had approached government to allow only Nigerian vessels be involved in the lighterage operations exclusively, an exercise that he claimed will provide 500,000 jobs for Nigerian youths and a monthly earning of about N5.4bn monthly.

According to him, this was what informed many of the indigenous shipping companies to acquire their own vessels, but he regretted that foreign ships were still in control of the lighterage operations from mother ships berthing in the neighbouring in Cotonou/Lome.

Labinjo maintained that the problem of Nigerian shipowners was not in the vessel, but finding jobs for which the vessels were meant for.

Although NIMASA had earlier denied issuing waivers as much as being claimed by NISA members, a member of the association alleged that no foreign ship master would dare come into the territorial waters to operate without waivers granted by the regulatory agency.