Appraising Bashir Jamoh’s transformational programmes at NIMASA

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) was established to make Nigeria the leading maritime hub in Africa with safe, secure shipping and cleaner oceans. Nigeria is bordered in the south by the Atlantic Ocean with about 800 kilometres of coastline. This is an asset that no country will joke with.

Since the appointment of Bashir Yusuf Jamoh as the Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), the maritime agency has seen improvement in service delivery in recent years, a development that industry stakeholders attributed to Bashir Jamoh’s transformation programmes that have got the agency noticed across the world. Appointed in March 2020, his programmes have positively improved every department at NIMASA.

A major success of the current administration at NIMASA is the Deep Blue Project which was Nigeria and NIMASA’s response to the frightening level of insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea.

According to the United Nations Security Council Report for November 2022, which sourced its data from the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), in 2020, 81 piracy incidents out of 195 globally, happened in the Gulf of Guinea. The region also experienced a high rate of kidnapping. In 2020 according to IMB, 130 crew members were kidnapped in 22 different incidents, representing 95 percent of such cases globally. What’s more, about $5 million were paid as ransoms annually to the kidnapping gangs terrorising the Gulf of Guinea, with direct and indirect effects on trade amounting to $1.925 billion.

But with the ingenious response from NIMASA, the cases of piracy and kidnappings have been reduced, attested to by the Security Council.

“The situation has shown possible signs of improvement. Piracy incidents in the Gulf of Guinea declined from 81 in 2020 to 34 in 2021. Kidnappings also fell to 57 last year, though the Gulf of Guinea nonetheless accounted for all kidnappings at sea worldwide in 2021. The IMB attributed the improvement to the increased presence of international naval vessels and cooperation with regional authorities. In the first six months of 2022, there were 12 reported piracy incidents in the Gulf of Guinea and no crew kidnappings,” the Security Council report stated.

Initiated in 2018, the Deep Blue Project involves the Federal Ministry of Transportation and Federal Ministry of Defence. It is to protect assets and enhance capacity building. In addition, it is domiciled and implemented by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA). A Project Management Team (PMT) oversees its implementation which comprises the Federal Ministry of Transportation; Ministry of Defence; Nigerian Defence Headquarters: Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy, and Nigerian Air Force; Department of State Services (DSS); Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA); Nigeria Police; and NIMASA

“Promptly responding to these challenges in view of the commanding economic role of the Gulf of Guinea, with Nigeria as a dominant player, the country initiated the Integrated National Security and Waterways Protection Infrastructure, otherwise called the Deep Blue Project. The project is being implemented by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA),” NIMASA stated in a statement.

The organisation added: “The scheme provides both land and air based surveillance capabilities, with a command and control centre for data gathering and information sharing. This is meant to facilitate a coordinated security watch over the country along with a coverage of the Gulf of Guinea. It is a massive enterprise that involves the acquisition and deployment of high-tech equipment, including vessels, weapons, drones, helicopters, and satellite communication systems.”

Ensuring the programme runs smoothly requires that the personnel in charge of the Deep Blue Project are well-trained, about the nitty-gritty of their jobs. This explains why NIMASA and employees of sister agencies such as the Nigerian Navy, Army, Air Force, Police, among others, are trained regularly.

According to Anthony Ogadi, coordinator of the Deep Blue Project and director, planning, research and data management services department, there are nine foreign and ten local training platforms under the Deep Blue Project, for the operation of assets under the maritime security scheme especially the special mission aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), armoured personnel carriers among others.

Safety on the international sea routes will amount to growth in international trade. And growth in trade enhances economic development and reduces poverty. In other words, Bashir Jamoh wants to promote trade and reduce poverty in Nigeria.

“In the last decade, trade has helped trigger strong growth in developing countries, whose share in the global trade has increased from 29 per cent in 1996 to 37 per cent in 2006 and whose exports have consistently been growing at a faster rate than those of developed countries. This has stimulated growth in export revenues of developing countries,” Santiago Fernández de Córdoba, an economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) who doubles as a special professor of Economics at Universidad de Navarra, Spain, said.

NIMASA under Bashir Jamoh has been commended by international observers of progress being made in the country. Captain Brian Lisko of the US Department of State, praised the organisation and the Nigerian government for the reduction of criminality in the Gulf of Guinea.

“We must commend the leading role which NIMASA has played in reducing piracy in the region through the deployment of its Deep Blue Project as well as its partnership with other maritime nations. The international community has taken note of this, and we wish to encourage you to keep it up. We propose that a US Coast Guard maritime adviser be deployed to Lagos with the consent of relevant authorities, with that person reporting back to the Coast Guard and advising on deployment of technical experts and tools to assist NIMASA’s efforts” Lisko said.

In order to ensure there is a steady availability of a competent workforce for NIMASA and the Deep Blue Project, a new batch of the project’s workforce was sent to India and Greece recently.

“The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency NIMASA has sent forth 235 Nigerians to India and Greece as batch B of the 435 young Nigerians to be trained as Licensed Deck and Engine Officers including Naval Architects under the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme, NSDP,” NIMASA stated.

Another positive development while Jamoh is at the helm of affairs at NIMASA is the disbursement of N16 billion and $350 million under the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF).

“What we have collected so far is in two folds made up of Naira and Dollar components. So far, the Funds available under the CVFF in naira component is around Sixteen Billion naira (₦‎16,000,000,000:00), while contributions in Dollar component hovers around the Three Hundred and Fifty Million Dollar mark ($350,000,000:00),” NIMASA said in statement.

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This fund was set in 2003 to empower Nigeria’s indigenous shipowners so as to be able to take control of Nigeria’s coastal inland shipping business, or cabotage trade. According to UNCTAD, 42 percent of the total goods loaded in ports worldwide took place in Asia, including developed and developing regions, representing 4.6 billion tons of goods out of 7.1 billion tons of goods in 2021. As Africa’s largest economy with a large coastline, Nigeria should play a significant role in the global cabotage industry, and the disbursement of the CVFF is a step in the right direction.

NIMASA now has a befitting head office. The new edifice was commissioned in November 2022 by Kitack Lim, Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), adding to the laurels won by Jamoh as the head of the organisation.

NIMASA under Jamoh was recently honoured by the Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) with the “Corporate Organisation Award” for the organisation’s exemplary records of tax compliance.

A professional par excellence, Bashir Jamoh holds a PhD in Logistics and Transport Management from the University of Port Harcourt; a master’s degree in Management from the Korea Maritime and Ocean University in South Korea as well as an Advanced Diploma in Management from the Bayero University Kano.

He also holds a Professional Certificate in Materials Management from the Institute of Logistics in the United Kingdom and a Diploma in Accounting from the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria.

Jamoh has attended diffrent management courses at the Said Business School, Oxford University, UK as well as the Institute of Public Partnerships in Washington DC, USA. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Transport and Logistics, Chartered Institute of Administration of Nigeria and Institute of Maritime Economists (Canada).