Corruption, Hindering Progress Is So Bad In Maritime Sector – NSC Boss

The executive secretary, Nigerian Shippers’ Council, Emmanual Jime said corruption among other challenges are limiting the progress of Nigeria’s Maritime sector and this needs to be tackled.

He also said the council cannot deliver on quality services if those services are mitigated by the incidences of corruption.

Jime, while speaking in Abuja on Wednesday, when the head of the Technical Unit on Governance & Anti- Corruption Reforms (TUGAR) Joan Onwumere, led her team to visit him in Abuja, also commended the TUGAR team for the good job there were doing and pledged the continued support of the NSC to the team to measure sanity of the maritime industry.

According to him, “Let us also be aware that there is still serveral ways to go, there is a lot of work left to be done.

‘’What we do at the NSC, because of the important role we play of regulating the commercial sector of the maritime dormain. There is no way we will deliver on quality services if those services are mitigated by the incidences of corruption.

‘’We are together in this and it is a battle that I believe we can win but we have to carry on with this work to its logical ends.

‘’I want to thank you for coming and to assure you even more that what ever is needed as far as support from the shippers council is concerned.

‘’By way of funding , by way of provision of equipment to the best of our ability that we have been able to do till now, we can only continue to do and do even more,”Jime said.

The NSC boss also said the work of TUGAR aligns with the desire of President Muhammadu Buhari ‘s led administration and the NSC and every well meaning Nigeria should support it.

On implementation of Nigeria Port Process Manual, the executive secretary said one of its challenges was that the NSC was the only agency bearing it’s burden.

‘’I regret to say that the greatest challenge perhaps you may face going forward is that the shippers council appears to have been bearing the burden of the implementation of the port process manual single handedly.

‘’This is supposed to be inter-agency platform, and so we can use this platform to appeal to all of the other agencies of government that are partners to what we do to also join shippers council in assisting so that we do not have the kind of challenge on funding that we are having in this present time.”

While speaking, TUGAR leader, Onwumere pledged to continue to work hard inorder to tackle corruption in Maritime sector.