The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has given three conditions for the disbursement of the Cabotage Vessels Finance Fund (CVFF) worth $350 million or N16 billion.
During a meeting of the Nigerian Ship-Owners’ Association (NISA) in Lagos recently, the committee set up by the Association to engage with the Federal Ministry of Transportation and NIMASA said that the Director General of NIMASA, Dr Bashir Jamoh, had given a stern directive that NISA and its counterpart association, the Ship Owners Association of Nigeria (SOAN), must unite and collapse into one indigenous association before the CVFF could be disbursed to them.
Secondly, the NIMASA DG asked that NISA must change the name of its CVFF Committee because the Federal Ministry of Transportation is about to set up a committee with that name. According to Valuechain findings, Jamoh has insisted that the Federal Ministry of Transportation cannot have a committee named CVFF Committee while NISA also has a committee named CVFF Committee.
The NISA committee headed by Dr. Edward Sowho explained that, during its meeting with the NIMASA DG, he also urged them not to fault the amount so far accrued into the CVFF account.
In Sowho’s words, “the NIMASA DG asked us to accept the disbursement of the amount in the CVFF, and that NISA cannot fault the amount in the CVFF and expect it to be disbursed. He also held that before the CVFF will be disbursed, the division among indigenous ship owners must end and that NISA and SOAN must collapse into one body of indigenous ship-owners group.”
Also during the meeting, the indigenous ship-owners deliberated on whether it was time to conduct elections for national executives of the group. However, the chairman, Board of Trustees, NISA, Chief Isaac Jolapamo, advocated for elections into national offices of the group in two weeks.
Finally, the group selected Captain Adewale Ishola, Captain Solomon Aluko, Gbolahan Adu, and Bob Manuel as members of the Electoral Committee and mandated the Committee to come up with a timeline and date for elections into national offices of the Association.