By Godwin Oritse, Godfrey Bivbere & Favour Eliokun

LAGOS—THE management of Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, has said the agency was broke and managing to pay salaries. Disclosing this to newsmen yesterday, NIMASA’s Director- General, Dr. Dakuku Peterside said the agency was managing to pay salaries due to the current economic down turn, coupled with low cargo throughput. Peterside also said that the new forex regime will also impact on the finances of the agency, adding that it had taken some level of creativity to pay staff salaries.

He explained that every financial leakage in the agency was being identified and blocked simultaneously, with a view to improving its financial profile. Explaining further, Peterside said the low level of crude export was another reason responsible for the current financial status of the agency. “NIMASA is almost down and out; we are only managing to pay salaries.  It is no longer business as usual,” he added.  Meanwhile, the management of the agency has set December deadline for operations in the agency to go paperless.

This, according to Peterside, is meant to eliminate human contact between clients of the agency and its staff, a development that breeds corruption in the first place. He noted that the bad image  the agency currently had in the eyes of Nigerians coupled with the global economic down turn and the seeming lack of focus on the part of the staff of the agency made the task before him very challenging.

The NIMASA boss said though the agency had a crop of well trained and dynamic staff, the structure of the agency currently made it difficult to achieve its core mandate. He noted that though the merger of the Nigerian Maritime Authority, NMA with the then Joint Maritime Labour Industrial Council, JOMALIC, to form NIMASA was done years ago; the new body had continued to operate on the structure of the defunct NMA. As a result, he said the management would embark on a structural reform of the agency to ensure it met its core mandate.