- Agencies establish Standing Committee for Blue Economy
Nigerian Navy and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), have identified Tongeji Island Badagry as a desirable location for maritime tourism as Nigeria seeks to harness its maritime potentials.
The Flag Officer Commanding Western Naval Command, Rear Admiral Mustapha Hasssan highlighted this when he led a delegation of senior Naval officers to NIMASA headquarters today (Tuesday).
Meanwhile, the Director General of NIMASA, Dr. Bashir Jamoh OFR, opined that the location could be a low hanging fruit as the nation explores maritime tourism under the newly created Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy.
The closest village to the Tongeji Island in Nigeria is Badagry and it is about 55 minutes by water, while just 5 minutes from Porto Novo. The residents speak French and English and they do their daily shopping from Porto Novo.
Dr. Jamoh described the oil rich island as a low hanging fruit for the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, with an assurance that the Agency will relate with the supervising Ministry for further actions, particularly as regards maritime tourism.
The highpoint of the meeting was the constitution of an eight-man committee, comprising four each from the Navy and NIMASA to serve as catalyst for Shift from Crude to Blue, now that Nigeria has a Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy.
Jamoh equally expressed delight at the rapid change in the narratives about security in Nigerian waters from the era of over 26 Piracy incidents and negative media exposure, to no single piracy incident in Nigerian waters for almost two years.
“The Nigerian model on maritime security is now being adopted in other countries. The change in narrative on maritime security and piracy is a direct product of effective collaboration of the Maritime Administration with the Nigerian Navy,” Jamoh said even as he expressed hope that the inter-agency relationship will blossom.
His words: “Collaboration with the Nigerian Navy is largely responsible for the confidence of stakeholders in the current Management of the Agency. I was in Brazil last week, the South Americans and even our neighbors like Ghana are eager to learn how we arrived at this MARAD-NAVY collaboration yielding successes. Just imagine that the negative media exposure in 2019-2020 about prevalent piracy and criminal activities in Nigerian waters had continued, you can only imagine where Nigeria would have been by now. I am glad we sought and got collaboration with the Navy.”
“The time has come for us to implement our Crude to Blue campaign since 2021. Maritime stakeholders in Nigeria should be ready to repay President Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCRF for creating the Marine and Blue Economy Ministry. If we must make headway in Tourism and fishing, security is priority. We will make a case for the designation of Marine Protected Areas particularly for fishing and the Nigerian Navy definitely will play a major role.”
On his part, the FOC West, Rear Admiral Mustapha Hassan, observed that there is a need to sustain information sharing between NIMASA and the Nigerian Navy.
Rear Admiral Hassan also commended NIMASA management for the non-kinetic support to the Western Naval Command, even as he requested NIMASA to support ‘Operation Water Guard’ to combat smuggling around the Badagry channel.
The FOC West, who had the Commander Deep Blue Commodore OA Akinbami on his entourage, noted that the Deep Blue assets are fully functional and requested more information sharing between the Western Naval Command and the NIMASA C4i center.
He also urged NIMASA to bring to the notice of the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, the need for Nigeria to take possession of a border island in Badagry, the oil rich Tongeji Island between Nigeria and Benin Republic for maritime tourism in particular.
