By Lucy Ogalue
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has commended the efforts of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) towards the realisation of the agency’s floating dry dock in the country.
The Director-General of NIMASA, Dr Bashir Jamoh, said this during the first quarterly meeting of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) units Consultative Forum ((3PCUF) in Abuja on Thursday.
Jamoh, represented by the Coordinator, Abuja Zonal office of NIMASA, Zelani Attah, said the agency had tremendously benefited from its collaboration with the ICRC.
”The experience of NIMASA in the last two years particularly has been to obtain Compliance Certificates on at least two Outline Business Case(s). Both of them are now processing for the Full Business Case.
”The two projects are the NIMASA Floating Dry-dock which was procured to render an essential service of dry-docking to vessels, as mandated by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) for the shipping industry in every three years.
”The project has the potential to add up to N1 billion monthly to the Nigerian economy when fully realised.
”The second project is called the Offshore Waste Reception Facility, a MARPOL Convention requirement, to evacuate all wastes generated by sailing vessels and crafts operational on our waters.
”This aims to avoid pollution to sea life and danger to the environment,” Jamoh said.
According to the NIMASA boss, the agency has other projects which have attained advanced feasibility study through the ICRC.
He said: ”For all of these, we give kudos to the guidance of the ICRC who established the templates and followed up by strict supervision, to ensure compliance to the processes.
”NIMASA is gratified by its collaboration with the ICRC so far. Surely we are delighted to participate in this consultative forum and indeed to host the first quarterly meeting of 2022.”
On his part, the ICRC boss, Mr Micheal Ohiani, commended the efforts of all the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for being committed to the forum.
Ohiani said in addition to building the usual PPP capacity, the commission would encourage global certifications through the Nigeria Institute of Infrastructure and PPP (NII3P) like the APMG Certified PPP Practitioner (CP3P) for members in 2022.
”With our population and available market, we are setting our sights on being the PPP knowledge base in Africa.
”The Commission wishes for you to note that it has started charging fees for our regulatory guidance activities which include a review of Outline and Business Cases and other processes that may require fees in line with ICRC Act and regulations.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the forum was formed to be a platform for the sharing of knowledge and experience among stakeholders engaged in a public-private partnership for the government.
The forum was attended by representatives of various MDAs of government who presented their project updates at the meeting. (NAN)
