Shola Fadeyi
The Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency(NIMASA) , Dr Dakuku Peterside has given a fresh pledge that the anti piracy bill will be passed into law by the National Assembly before the end of this year.
The Bill when it becomes law is expected to give legal backing to the prosecution of those who engage in criminal acts particularly piracy and other activities which bother on security breach on Nigeria’s territorial waters.
The NIMASA sponsored the Bill as an Executive Bill in 2017 on behalf of the Federal Government as part of measures to check loss of revenue due to Government on crude oil through illegal bunkering and hijacking of ships by pirates and other criminal elements
Dr Peterside who gave this assurance in Lagos during the World Maritime Day said that when the Bill is passed into law, Nigeria will be the first country in Africa that has such a law.
He said there have been a lot of concern about piracy within the Gulf of Guinea and Gulf of Aden but pointed out that the recent statistics published by the International Maritime Bureau(IMB) based in Malaysia showed that there was a drop in incidents of piracy within these areas .
According to him , this has been possible because of the few things NIMASA has been doing with the Nigerian Navy through the enhancing of its intelligence gathering mechanism and inter-agency as well as inter-departmental collaboration.
Though , he did not say what gave him the confidence that the Bill will scale through the Legislature this year particularly when 2019 is already at the door, indications are that the NIMASA through the Transportation Ministry has indulged in the necessary official lobbying at the National Assembly to ensure that the Bill scales through.
It will be recalled that the NIMASA DG had said last year that the Bill would be passed into law by the National Assembly before the end of 2017
He had particularly said that ‘ I have received assurances of accelerated passage of the bill and before the end of this year the bill will become a law and we will have legal backing to fight piracy and criminality on our water ways’.
