By Jimoh Babatunde

The much-touted efforts by the Lagos State Government at making the waterways safe for transportation might come to nought if the prevailing cold war between some private boat operators and officials of the Lagos State Waterways Authority, LASWA, is not nipped in the bud.

Boat operators blame the development on LASWA officials and administrators who they accuse of multiple tariffs regime in waterways activities and for not caring about the welfare of the operators.

For the boat operators, safety should of neccesity be a dominant factor in water transportation. They added that before now, LASWA under the leadership of Jide Cole met with the relevant stakeholders in water transportation in the state with a view to fashioning out a blueprint on safety. They pointed out that arising from this meeting, the agency made the wearing of life jackets compulsory for passengers of ferries and local boats.

But they complain that unlike what obtained in the past, the present Managing Director of the agency, Yinka Marihno, has failed to meet with stakeholders since he assumed office.

The body of water transporters in the state, under the aegis of Association of Nigerian Tourist Boat Operators and Water Transporters, NATBOWAT, said water transportation is the safest if the phobia associated with water is removed.

Some weeks back, officials of the Lagos State Government on election assignment died when their boats capsized on their way to Amuwo-Odofin and Epe water sides in the state.

Members of NATBOWAT said this could have been avoided if the agency responsible for safety in the state had been up and doing.

The National President of the association, Tarzan Balogun, in a chat with journalists recently said LASWA officials are more concerned about revenue than safety.

While calling on the authority to be alive to its responsibilities, Balogun said: “The focus of the authority is just on revenue drive and not safety of the waterways users”.

He disclosed that a boat owner wishing to operate in Lagos waterways will have to contend with prohibitive registration fees or charges. He noted that they are billed in the range of N31,000 to N5 million as the case may be for them to operate on particular routes.

“The government set up LASWA to develop the waterways, but the administrators of the agency working with some of their friends are discouraging serious investors by introducing unreasonable tariff for our operations,” he said.

He added that the smallest boat operator is charged between N31, 000 and N1.5m for plying particular routes, apart from the N5 million each operator in the state has to part with. Curiously enough, no other operators in the transportation sector in the state, he further said, are made to pay such fees.

Balogun said apart from the licensing charges, they still have to contend with buying life jackets, fuelling their boats and the problem of water hyacinths.

He said if LASWA wants to encourage water transportation in the state, they can give life jackets to operators and stop the harassment of operators who cannot provide up to 10 life jackets in a boat.

To affirm his assertion that the agency is after revenue, he said if any operator is caught without life jackets, instead of the operator being arrested the officials will remove his engine leaving such boats at the mercy of the turbulent waves.

Balogun said if their concern is safety, they will not remove the engines of boat operators who have erred on the matter of providing life jackets. “In most cases, they extort money from these operators before their engines are released,” he alleged.

Some members of the associations who were in attendance during the media chat informed how officials of LASWA have been extorting money from them. They said their ordeal in this respect has been worsened by officials of the Nigeria Navy who in the guise of maintaining the ban on night travel use the opportunity to start extorting money from them beginning from 6pm.

They called on Governor Babatunde Fashola and the Commandant of the Navy to intervene to save the jobs of their members, while they appealed to corporate organisations to come to their aid by donating life jackets to their members.

They said the corporate organisations as well as relevant government agencies both at the state and federal levels can emulate the Director General of the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation, NTDC, who sometime ago, donated life jackets to them.