The Secretary General of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), Arsenio Dominguez, has congratulated the Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, Dr. Dayo Mobereola on his appointment by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

In a conveyance letter personally signed by him, the IMO Secretary General recognised the strides of the Agency in building a robust maritime sector in Nigeria, adding that the IMO commends the significant effort, initiatives, and investment that Nigeria has made in strengthening its maritime institutions.

In the words of Dominguez, “the focus on strengthening maritime law enforcement and security architecture has been welcomed by seafarers and flag States. The Deep Blue project and the C4i Centre as well as maritime piracy laws under the SPOMO Act are just some of the many investments that have set a new gold standard in the region in maritime security capacity building”.

“IMO has long supported the regional role of the Yaoundé Code of Conduct and its Member States in strengthening maritime security and law enforcement. In this respect, we have been greatly encouraged with the continuation of this regional ownership with the formation and work of the Gulf of Guinea Maritime Collaboration Forum and Shared Awareness and De-confliction (GoG-MCF/SHADE) in 2021”.

He commended the Agency’s partnership with the various regional bodies, and expressed readiness of the IMO to work with Nigeria and other member states on many maritime issues with the aim of jointly tackling these issues.

“NIMASA’s partnership with the Interregional Coordination Centre (ICC) and the collaboration with the shipping industry, navies and the Yaoundé architecture has been instrumental in suppressing the threat of piracy to merchant vessels and seafarers in line with UN Security Council resolution 2634 (2022) on piracy and armed robbery in the Gulf of Guinea and IMO Assembly resolution A.1159 (32)”. I look forward to working with you and your colleagues on many of the maritime issues that we are jointly tackling and hope to welcome you in person at the IMO, he said.

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The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in last year’s general elections, Peter Obi, has expressed concern and sought urgent and lasting solutions to the perennial deplorable electricity supply in the country, recording 141 cases of national grid collapse in 11 years.

He stated this on Wednesday in a series of posts on his X handle, saying that Nigeria could not grow its economy in darkness, especially that the nation only produced 13,000MW while the demand was about 200,000MW.

He said that even with the 13,000MW, only about 3,500MW was available for homes and businesses, hence that the situation put Nigeria as the lowest per capita wattage in the World.

“We are too endowed to be a nation of generators and to be trapped in darkness. We cannot grow our economy in darkness.

“The Nigeria electricity supply industry faces a real and present danger of collapse despite the efforts made in more than two decades to initiate a reform of the NESI.”

He further said that Nigerians could contrast the available supply of electricity with competitor countries in Africa like Egypt and South Africa with respective populations of approximately 112m and 59.6m people supplying about 60,000MW and 58,000MW respectively.

He noted that the difference in energy wattage had massive implications for human development and economic growth.

He advised that, “I suggest that the federal government immediately constitutes a technical task force of real professionals without political consideration to present a diagnosis of the crisis of the sector and get to work to correct such simple slippage like incessant fire outbreaks that lead to perennial system collapse, drastically improve coordination and coherence between TCN and DisCos so that there will be no load rejection, and breath down on all operators to deliver on their technical responsibilities.”