Mr. Romeo Itima is the Managing Director of Global West Vessel Specialist Limited, a company responsible for maritime security and surveillance in Nigeria. An experienced  United States trained Master Mariner, he has garnered over 30 years experience in many aspects of marine operations, especially intelligence gathering, surveillance, maritime security and vessel operations, having been actively involved in similar operations in the United States.

He has also won several laurels in maritime/marine security, safety and vessel operations both nationally and internationally. In this interview with MICHAEL EBOH & DAPO AKINREFON, he declares that the input of private experts is required in the maritime industry for Nigeria to fully harness its maritime potentials..

Excerpts: How did you get involved in Nigerian maritime industry?

Maybe I should start from the beginning. I grew up in Escravos where five of my uncles were pilots. I was still young when I learnt to navigate a ship. I later became a seaman and from there moved on to foreign countries. I grew up in a maritime environment. When I went to the United States, it was to further my education and come back to join my father’s job.

That was my intention, but for some reasons, I stayed behind and joined the US Master marine. In 2002, I came for a visit to Nigeria, and at that time two of my cousins were involved in the maritime industry and I said, ‘let me go out with you guys and see.’ When I went out there, it was wide open – nobody was in control and I asked who is in control?

I was quite surprised that this country was left open like that. I said what is happening? Nobody knew what was going on, I mean anybody could just do whatever he or she wanted. At that time I met Senator Diffa, so I told him we have a problem in Nigeria, and he asked me what the problem was?

So I told him. I said this is the problem. I explained everything to him. I said Nigeria is left open and anything can happen either to this country, or somebody may hide explosives or bombs and take to any other country that could cause large scale disaster.

This could be hung on Nigeria. He did not quite understand my explanation. So I took him straight to the company I was working for in the United States. I took him from point to point. He said he didn’t know that we had such things, and I said, ‘don’t worry, I am coming back to Nigeria, and I will take you to places where we have almost identical things as we have here.’

So, when I came, I took Diffa and travelled round the country. Now he saw the other side of the story. It is very hard to understand it if you are not part of it, that’s what I am saying. Now, Diffa helped – the first human being that ever took the case to OBJ was former Minister of Transport, Abiye Sekibo.

Diffa took me to him and when I was talking, he was just looking. I said there are ships out there that NPA doesn’t have records of, NIMASA doesn’t have records of – nobody has records of them. He said this is not true, I said yes, it is true. He said, ‘go and bring four names and be sure the ships were in Nigeria.’

In two days, we went back with hundred names, from the time they arrived to the time they departed. When I showed him, he was so surprised and said I should give him one week for him to do his own findings. He found out that NPA did not even understand what he was talking about.

It then he knew we really had a problem. He was the man that took our proposal to OBJ, and OBJ was the first person to put his signature on that project. Only God knows if we can repair the things that have gone wrong.

What and what are the things you said have gone wrong in the maritime industry.

Take, for example, the crime of illegal bunkering. What they’re doing now is not illegal bunkering; it is theft of crude oil. They hijack and steal oil from ship. The word bunkering came in 1984, in Idiagbon’s time – when I came home briefly, I had worked with the then NSO, training them how to search ship, what to look for.

That was the time of illegal bunkering. What happened at that time was that people could use canoes to load whatever kind of oil and bunker all the ships inside the port. Idiagbon was about to stop that. That was the world of illegal bunkering. At that time it was the right word, but now it is not.

A ship must have bunker; if you drive from here (Lagos) to Cotonou you cannot come back without refueling your car. All ships that come to Nigeria must bunk, but though there were licensed people at that time, the unlicensed people were more, and the licensed ones that were doing it right faced difficulties because the unlicensed ones were selling more cheaply.

That was the problem at that time; that was far back in ’84. It was a little crime then, but slowly the country was bleeding and these people graduated into what they are today. Now it is hard to stop, but it has to before Nigeria turns into something else. Now, oil theft is the major problem for the country, financially.

It is an organised crime; there are little guys, medium and the top. The JTF has been reported to have set fire on an apprehended boat and some people may have thought that it was jungle justice, but the truth is that these people are so powerful that going through the traditional channel of the court to prosecute them is very hard.

So that could be the kind of message that maybe they would listen to. They are usually considered a source of hazard to the environment, because they cause erosion, oil spill and all kinds of problems. So something has to be done. Where we are by now with the NIMASA, if the support we need is being given, I think we would be able to solve this problem.

What is the support that you need?

We need support from the military, journalists like you, politicians, and oil companies. If they support our project the present problem would be easily taken care of. Now, all of you probably know that NIMASA has awarded coastal security contract to Tompolo, and that Tompolo is an ex-militant, and all that.

That is not support; it is a propaganda tool to discredit the intention that we have. If you look at the CAC, I mean these people that are writing this have people almost everywhere. If you want to know who are the shareholders of Global West and you’re asking me you’re doing injustice to yourself; go to the CAC and see who are the people behind this company.

People like Senator Diffa, nobody is mentioning them; somebody like Rear Admiral Omu, nobody is mentioning them. Let’s look at this positively. For the magnitude of this kind of job, you would wonder if these guys can do it. The other thing is that on the application we were asked how much money we were going to invest to justify what percentage we were to receive.

That is why you saw we’ve invested as much as N120m. At the end of the day it would come out in the news that the Federal Government is going to award contract for this much money, but where do they get these facts from? These are some of the things we want to set right.

We don’t have to amend things; tell it as it is; there’s nothing to hide when we’re talking about the nation. We should report the things that would promote our nation; so, let’s take our nation before ourselves. Since we (Global West) started some persons are owing NIMASA almost about $200m, and if they’re owing NIMASA $200m then they would be owing NPA three times that amount.

NPA charges are more. There are under-declarations resulting from the fact that they bring 10,000 tonnes but they declare only 2000, so they only pay for 2000. The records remain somewhere if you know where to look. This is the problem now: if we can track a ship that is coming and the ship has not declared arrival, which is a crime already, if we know you are coming to, let’s say, Bonny offshore, and sometimes it happens that at Bonny offshore or Bonny terminal ships would go and load cargoes and leave without the Federal Government knowing – now, if we can track you coming, the Federal Government would know, right?

If we find you’re not in the manifest then we would ask why you are here but we can’t see your documents? The Federal Government would then collect their money or effect an arrest or do whatever they should. Do you know how much Nigeria loses daily through crude oil theft?

No, how much?

You should know better than me, but I think it’s a lot of money. The other question is do we actually know how much oil is coming out of the ground daily? That’s where I am holding the oil majors accountable. What does it take us to know?

We have the instrument, the platform, whatever and we still have problems calculating how much is coming out; what would it take the Federal Government to get these statistics? How many ships do we have in our water at all times?

There are ships in Nigeria that are flying all kinds of flags that the flagged countries don’t even know about. The ship that was arrested around March this year, its last port of call was Lagos. It left Lagos here before going to load crude from wherever and went to Ghana.

How did this ship come into the port with a pilot, if there was NPA? How was this ship able to dish out whatever or load whatever it loaded without NPA and NIMASA knowing? They were supposed to know if the ship had the relevant insurance. NPA was supposed to know; if the ship did not have then it won’t be allowed to come in.

Why was it that nobody detected this ship with a fake flag and doing business in Nigeria until a foreign country arrested this ship before it was discovered that it had a fake flag? So many questions to ask. Can we answer these questions? Why not? If we answer these questions, can we put a stop to all this? Why not?

What is the solution?

The solution is almost what we are doing now. Bring private people into some of these areas. They can help this nation.