The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has urged women in the maritime sector to tap the over $350 million Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) to deepen their investment in shipping.
Speaking in Lagos on Wednesday at an event to mark this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) with the theme #EmbraceEquality, Bashir Jamoh, the director-general of NIMASA, said women could empower themselves by becoming ship owners, establishing jetties, purchasing vessels, going into ferry services and other maritime related businesses.
The CVFF was established alongside the Nigerian Coastal and Inland Shipping (Cabotage) Act of 2003, to empower indigenous ship owners to take control of the nation’s coastal and inland shipping business, otherwise known as the cabotage trade.
According to him, there was the need to level the playing field in the maritime industry, as statistics show that only about two percent of women were involved in the global maritime industry and only one percent of them in the managerial level.
Jamoh said gender equality was not negotiable in the nation’s maritime sector, as equality in the workplace would help to improve organisational performance and overall output.
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Earlier, Lami Tumaka, a former director of NIMASA, who spoke via Zoom, said the theme of this year’s IWD was targeted at bringing women and other marginalised groups into the technological space in order to innovatively promote gender equality.
She called for digital literacy and sharpening the managerial skills of women to enable them to grow and impact in their businesses.
“Today, we are celebrating the ability of women to move through life. In doing so, we must embrace equity through fairness and justice. We can only achieve this through training and retraining of women and the creation of gender favourable policies, “she said.
Tumaka said there was the need to have more women becoming part of policy makers to ensure gender impactful policies in society.
Presenting a paper on the topic ‘women embracing technology in the 21st-century,’ Olamide Odusanya, director of internal audit at NIMASA, said there were billions of girls waiting to change the world but they need access to proper education and opportunities.
Odusanya called on the agency to think of allowing flexible working conditions that allow workers – male and female, to work from home rather than spend quality man-hour in traffic.
