By Godfrey Bivbere & Victoria Edema

Chairman of Indigenous Ship owners Association of Nigeria (ISAN), Chief Isaac Jolapamo, has accused the Federal Government of unknowingly creating the problem of piracy.

Speaking with maritime journalists in Lagos, Jolapamo explained that there has been gradual domination of the nation’s coastal trade by foreigners following government’s seeming lack of interest.

The ISAN boss noted that most of the seafarers, who were gainfully employed by local ship owners and were contributing meaningfully to the economy, are now jobless. He further stressed that even those who are still lucky to be employed do not get their salaries regularly because their vessels do not get jobs.

According to him, “I can understand because most of the seafarers today are disgruntled, they are disgruntled because they do not have business. The ship owners that employ them can not pay them. So, the idle mind is the devil’s workshop.

“If the vessel is hi-jacked, who can hi-jack the vessel? It is somebody who is professionally competent to do so. Who are they? They are Nigerians, they are not Ghanaians and they are not Togolese.”

“It is piracy that we have bred ourselves. We all know what the problem is. When we buy new vessels, they were trading. When we bring them here, they hardly work. I had two ships last year, I had two jobs and the other had six jobs for the whole year.”

“For a ship to break even, for you to make money and your bank to smile at you, your ship when it is on a voyage charter supposed to make three cargoes a month and mine made two a year and the other six in a whole year. How am I not going to have problem with the bank.”

“How am I going to pay my staff? If I keep the crew on the ship. I will feed them but how do they feed their own family? How do they send their children to school? Are we not the once breeding piracy?”

Jalapamo, who is also the Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer of Molap Group, complained about the implementation of the Cabotage law which was supposed to restrict trade in the nation’s coastal water to local ship owners.

He said the law introduced about 10 years ago has not served the purpose for which it was established. Instead he continued, local operators are even worse off today when compared to the period before the introduction of the law.

Jolapamo noted that these foreign companies, most of which are operating illegally have gradually succeeded in driving their local counter parts out of business. He explained that all his counterparts in the shipping business have their fleets depleted because they have been deprived of jobs for a long time.

He pointed out that he had six vessels 10 years ago adding that the number has since depleted to just one. He said the normal thing is for a vessel to do three or four jobs a month but noted that in the whole of last year, while one of his vessel did just two jobs through out last year, the other did six the same period.