Rotimi Amaechi, the Minister of
Transport, has threatened that the Federal government will scrap the Nigerian
Maritime and Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) if the parastatal does
not sit up and fulfill their obligations.
Amaechi said this while appearing
before the senate committee on Maritime yesterday January 19th.
“I don’t think we are proceeding
with the university being proposed by NIMASA because it is a waste of
resources, and unfortunately a lot of money had already been released for the
university project hence there is no structure on ground but just the
feasibility study. The Chinese company contracted, confirmed that only the
feasibility study was in place.
We are not going ahead with the
university project proposed by NIMASA because we have an institution in Oron,
we have Nigeria Institute of Transport Technology, Zaria, and we have the
Nigerian College of Aviation in Zaria which we could upgrade to a University
status and NIMASA is proposing to build a new one. Currently, the way NIMASA
is, it looks as if it was established just for the purpose of collecting money and
nothing more.
If NIMASA failed to perform its core
responsibility, then it has no business existing. If it is just to collect
money from individuals, anybody can do that. We can hire a tax collector to
collect money from maritime operators on behalf of federal ministry of
transport. It is either NIMASA sit up and carry out its own responsibility or
we come to the national assembly to repeal the act setting it up.”he said
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