More heads, including those of Army Generals (serving and retired) and a past Director General of Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) will roll, if President Muhammadu Buhari goes ahead with his decision to launch a full investigation into the activities of the disbanded Presidential Implementation Committee on Maritime Safety and Security (PICOMSS).
This is coming on the heels of the discovery by the 13-man presidential panel auditing arms procurement that a serving Major General in the Nigerian Army between 2007 and 2015, took N4 billion from NIMASA to upgrade some military facilities in one of the states in the South-South, when he was serving there.
Only N250 million out of the money was reportedly spent by the general on the project. However, Sunday Telegraph investigation reveals that the case of the Major General was a tip of the iceberg, as PICOMSS, until the time it was scrapped by the Federal Government in 2013, operated above the law.
It was also said to be collecting money from NIMASA without recourse to any civilised process, and of course, was spending the money as it deemed fit as it was not answerable to any authority. Meanwhile, PICOMSS came about following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States of America, a development that compelled the International Maritime Organisation to put in place the International Ships and Ports Facility Security (ISPS) Code to detect and deter security threats in the maritime transportation sector.
Nigeria commenced its implementation in 2004, with the ad-hoc Presidential Implementation Committee on Maritime Safety and Security (PICOMSS), set up by then President Olusegun Obasanjo to ensure that the country complied with the IMO ultimatum to member nations to comply or face sanction.
The committee was under the Federal Ministry of Transport (FMOT) and it had then Minister of Transport, Dr. Abiye Sekibo, as its chairman with some retired Generals as members, while most of the security agencies were co-opted into the taskforce to ensure that Nigeria escapes the IMO hammer. President Obasanjo was said to had enlisted many retired military officers into the committee because he wanted to rehabilitate them. Nine months later, Nigerian seaports were given provisional compliant certificate by the IMO and at that juncture, PICOMSS was supposed to wind down but it hanged up.
It was, however, no longer under the Ministry; it became military boys’ affair. Though the serving and retired top military brass in PICOMSS went about extorting ‘security money’ from maritime institutions, especially NIMASA, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and even International Oil Companies operating in Nigeria, the state of insecurity at the Nigerian seaport deteriorated so badly that as at 2013, when NIMASA took over the responsibility of ensuring the security and safety in Nigerian seaports, more than 90 per cent of the Nigerian seaports were ISPS Code compliant and the country barely escaped US Coast Guards sanction.
Though sources close to NIMASA told Sunday Telegraph that the maritime regulator was then paying N100 million monthly to PICOMSS, the payment of a whopping N6 billion to the illegal body by a certain Director General of NIMASA raised a lot of eyebrows within the agency and outside. The DG reportedly paid the money because he was assured of his second term in office by those highly connected generals.
The DG reportedly further gave jobs the generals’ wards, but that could not secure him the second term he so much desired, as the Jonathan administration was not well disposed to the activities of PICOMSS. Jonathan went further to scrape it and its assets were given to the Nigerian Navy and NIMASA. Meanwhile in an attempt by the generals to stay on, they started to promote an amorphous body, called the National Maritime Security Agency (MASECA), a name that swallowed PICOMSS.
The name was used to collect over N200 billion from government agencies in the name of providing maritime security. Also, Sunday Telegraph learnt that the generals had the full support of a one time National Security Adviser in the Yar’Adua- Jonathan administration; they continued to lobby the National Assembly for an Act of the Parliament to be passed, setting up MASECA.
The Seventh Federal House of Representatives passed the bill but there was no concurrence from the Seventh Senate. Sunday Telegraph recalls that before the reported recent directive by President Buhari, stakeholders had started calling for a probe of the over eight years of the existence of the body which despite the over N200 billion it reportedly collected from government agencies and private oil companies, it has reportedly resurfaced in Abuja, seeking to continue from where it stopped.
It was disclosed that they are angling to leverage on the image challenge currently facing NIMASA to cajole the Federal Government to hand over the security of the Nigerian maritime domain to them. They were also said to have appointed a Director- General for the nonexistent agency (name withheld).
According to the ‘DG’, MASECA is “presently running skeletal services and is involved in intelligence gathering, pending when its enabling bill would be passed by the Senate. Aside wanting to be responsible for the security of the Nigerian waters, Sunday Telegraph checks reveals that the general are also eyeing the pipeline protection jobs, which government has cancelled its contract with the exmilitants.
It will be recalled that when the House of Representatives held a public hearing on the bill in 2010, stakeholders in the maritime sector kicked against the bill, saying it ran against the grains of prudence and accountability in governance. IMO also kicked against the passage of the controversial bill into law because it would run fowl of International maritime conventions.
The stakeholders further said that the PICCOMSS failed to perform adequately, the duty for which it was set up as it was on record that 10 years after, only two of Nigeria’s seaports were found to be compliant. This development, they argued, informed the threat by the US Coast Guard (USCG), in 2013, to blacklist Nigerian seaport if the country failed to raise its compliance level.
Sunday Telegraph learnt that IMO opposition to MASECA was hinged on the provisions of the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention, which disallows militarisation of merchant shipping, while in the proposed law, the body may be encouraging the carriage of arms onboard trading ships.
Also, going by the provisions of IMO conventions and guidelines, NIMASA is presently the only agency recognised by the IMO to carry out maritime safety and security administration in Nigeria. It was gathered that Nigeria faces the risk of being sanctioned if MASECA is institutionalised to carry out activities relating to maritime safety and security in Nigeria through the passage of the MASECA bill, since the country is a signatory to the SOLAS Convention.
