The Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) have commenced 24 hour surveillance of a nation’s waters to enhance security of vessels and safety of cargoes.

Addressing a world conference in Lagos the Director General of NIMASA, Dakuku Peterside reeled out an overview of the agency’s activities in the last 12 months.
According to him, the new regime backed by updated technology,captures all vessels in the Nigerian maritime domain irrespective of weather condition.
Peterside said Nigeria through NIMASA’s operations can now do profiling of vessels on waters day and night which also enhance response time to any form of maritime emergency.

He said ” I am glad to inform you that NIMASA now operates a 24 hour surveillance system which captures all vessels in the Nigerian maritime domain irrespective of weather conditions.
” We can now achieve complete profile analysis which includes the flag, registered owner,operator,beneficial owner and movements over a specified period.
” This system enables us to take very swift decisions in real time , on any targeted ship. Currently all offshore areas of interest have been electronically cordoned off with a guard zone via our surveillance system and we can at once view live feed (activities) especially in the oil fields and on crude oil platforms”
Peterside added that the agency is taking steps to enhance its revenue collection through billing of pipelines and identifying untapped resources.
Within the last one year, the agency exploited statutory provision of sea protection levy gazette with billing of pipelines,oil rigs and Floating Production Storage Offloading (FPSO) facilities.
On the Nigeria Seafarers Development Programme designed to provide scholarship for indigenous scholars in maritime related disciplines, Peterside said 1,045 beneficiaries have graduated from the scheme.
The graduate figure represents 42% of the total of 2500 NIMASA sponsored beneficiaries in some selected maritime training institutions outside Nigeria.
A breakdown shows that 226 graduated from the Arab Academy in Egypt,76 from south Tyneside Newcastle in England while 743 graduated from various partner universities in The Philippines
NIMASA according to Peterside, have intensified efforts to achieve sea time training for a first batch of 400 beneficiaries of the scheme.