NIMASA commends ICRC’s efforts on dry dock realisation

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has praised the efforts of the Infrastructure Concessions Regulatory Commission (ICRC) towards the completion of the agency’s floating dry dock in the country.

NIMASA Director-General, 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, representative of NIMASA’s Abuja area office, Zelani Attah, said the agency had benefited greatly from its collaboration with the ICRC.

”NIMASA’s experience in the last two years, in particular, has been obtaining Compliance Certificates in at least two Scheme Business Cases. Both are now being processed for the full business case.

”The two projects are the NIMASA Floating Dry Dock, which was acquired to provide an essential dry dock service to ships, as mandated by the Maritime Organization (IMO) for the shipping industry every three years.

”The project has the potential to add up to 1 billion naira per month to the Nigerian economy when fully realized.

”The second project is called the Maritime Waste Reception Facility, a requirement of the MARPOL Convention, to evacuate all the waste generated in our waters.

“This is intended to prevent contamination of marine life and danger to the environment,” said Jamoh.

According to the head of NIMASA, the agency has other projects that have achieved an advanced feasibility study through the ICRC.

He said: “For all this, we congratulate the ICRC guide who established the templates and followed up to ensure compliance with the processes.

”NIMASA is satisfied with the ICRC so far. We are certainly delighted to participate in this consultative forum and indeed to host the first quarterly meeting of 2022.”

For his part, the head of the ICRC, Mr Micheal Ohiani, praised the efforts of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) to be committed to the forum.

Ohiani said that in addition to building the usual PPP capability, the commission would encourage global certifications through the Nigerian Institute of Infrastructure and PPP (NII3P) as the APMG Certified PPP Practitioner (CP3P) for members in 2022.

”With our population and available market, we are setting our sights on being the APP knowledge base in Africa.

”The Commission would like you to note that it has started charging fees for our regulatory guidance activities, which include a review of scheme and business cases and other processes that may require fees in accordance with the Act and ICRC regulations.

The Nigerian News Agency reports that the forum was formed to be a platform for the exchange of knowledge and experience among stakeholders involved in a public-private partnership for the government.

The forum was attended by many government MDAs who presented their project updates at the meeting.