Cabotage Law: Local Shipowners Lament Flagrant Breach By Foreign Shipping Firms

Indigenous shipowners have accused foreign shipping firms flagrant breach of cabotage law, calling on the federal government to clamp down on these foreign vessels operating in the nation’s coastal water illegally.

The group also said the exclusion of Nigerian shipowners has cost the country billions of dollars as Nigerian own vessels are left out of participating in lifting of crude, saying, foreign vessels remain a key player in the conveyance of this product.

This was disclosed over the weekend when the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Nigeria Shipowners Association (NISA), Chief Issac Jolapamo, inaugurated 6-man Reconciliation Committee, on the crisis rocking the first local Shipowners’ association in Nigeria.

The 6-man reconciliation committee has the mandate of bringing back its aggrieved members and others who exited the embattled association in the past.

The committee members include Emmanuel Ilorin, Akin Akinyemi, Adewale Ishola, Paul Omolodun, Edmund Martins, and one outsider in the person of Olayiwola Shittu, the former president of the Association Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents.

However, the group at the event, said the continuous undermining of the Cabotage act 2003 which forbids foreign vessels from operating within the Nigeria coastal water has been an issue, calling on the federal government to clamp down on these illegal practices.

Speaking, Jolapamo said shipowners have lost out in the present government, saying there is need to hold an election before the end of the year in order to constitute new executives that would move the association forward.

“We must not allow NISA to die. There is a need to chart a new way forward. The main issue is how to bring back the association to take its pride of place in the maritime industry. We need to reposition NISA before the next government comes into power,” he said.