By Ajibola Adedoye
There is need for all major stakeholders in the maritime space to come together, forge a strong collaboration with international partners, speak with one voice and be intentional about reduction of the issue of war risk insurance premiums on cargo ships.
Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dayo Mobereola made this submission during an interactive session with maritime media professionals in Lagos on Monday, August 12, 2024.
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Dr. Mobereola said: “One of the points I raised in Chatham House is how to reduce the war risk premium and in all honesty Nigeria alone cannot do it, we need the International Maritime Organization to be with us because for instance the cartel alone are making so much money, so they will rather keep it as it is even if we have zero piracy. If we don’t force the issue, they will continue to charge us but in order to trust the issue, we want our international partners to go with us to meet these insurance companies and said for the past three years there has not been issue of piracy, there is no issue of sea robberies, therefore this war risk premium must come down and in coming down, it reduces the freight cost for our own import and export as well.
“So, we have engaged them, we have taken it to the United Nations and they are going to support us and we will be to take it to the insurance companies and they will have no choice but to reduce it because they know the numbers and they are aware of it but they are just benefitting from it at our expense, so it has to stop” he assured.
On the issue of bilateral diplomacy, the NIMASA D.G said: “I’m not going to sit here and castigste my predecessors, I can only assure you that we can only do better on what they have done in the past. Yes, we met on board some agreements, some procedures were not signed and solidified and even more opportunities that we are looking at now, based on the fact that I’m barely five months on the job, you will agree with me that the best way in tackling this is to understand what the problem is first, we need to engage all the maritime nations so as to itemize what we want as we don’t want to sign an MoU that will not be beneficial to us at the end of the day, we must sign an MoU that will be beneficial to our climate so we are putting together what we need and after that, we will be able to approach other maritime nations and put on the table and say to them, this is what we want to achieve, can you partner with us? And I’m sure a lot of them will partner with us because of what we are offering them, talking about what we are bringing to the table, we have the numbers, intelligence, resources and many others. We will be able to achieve this within a very short period of time” Dr. Mobereola maintained.
During the session, the NIMASA D.G underscores the importance of media partnership while acknowledging that with the support of all media practitioners in the maritime sector, his reign as the Director General will witness utmost success and greater achievement.
He however promised a quarterly engagements with maritime media practitioners to enable the agency relate more with journalists while xrayimg activities of the agency in terms of performance and objectives in the coming months.
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