Marine club advocates use of modern boats on Nigeria waterways
NAN-H-54
Boats
By Taiye Elebiyo-Edeni
Abuja, June 12, 2017 (NAN) The Marine Club of Nigeria (MCN), on Monday advised the Nigeria maritime sector to stop the use antiquated boats on waterways to save lives and property.
The President of the Club, Chinedu Jideofo-Ogbuagu gave this advise in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
“We need to have security and safety on our waterways, because the passengers’ boats are always overloaded and we still use antiquated wooden boat.
“We are in 2017, we should not have such boats on our waterways anymore, we need modern boats and we build modern boats in Nigeria.
“They are so many modern boats builders in Nigeria, our people need to switch from the antiquated, unsafe transport vessels to the modern type that are more secured, stronger and safer generally.
“The maritime sector has not been organised, we need to organise ourselves, that is one of the mission statement of the MCN and we are trying to get our people together under one umbrella,” he said.
The president stated that they were working on critical areas of the industry to move the sector toward the right direction, which has been a major challenge.
He said that government in collaboration with private sector and other stakeholders are working hard to address the issue of insecurity and piracy.
According to him, the club intends to hold a stakeholders conference, which would address the lapses in maritime policies.
“We need to tidy up some of the maritime policies; there are so many overlaps within the various regulatory bodies.
“We need to tidy up those things, so that every agencies will know their own areas which is clearly defined so that they won’t be fighting over nothing.’’
The MCN president said they are trying to resolve the challenges of funding by facilitating the establishment of maritime bank, which would help in making funds available. (NAN)
TY/AFA
Edited by Felix Ajide