Fact-Check: Misleading! Insufficient Evidence of NIMASA Crumbling Under Mobereola’s Watch Claim: An online news platform, ShippingWorld News Magazine has claimed that NIMASA is crumbling under the Director General of the National Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dayo Mobereola citing controversial issues around the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme. Verdict: Misleading.
Fact-Check: Misleading! Insufficient Evidence of NIMASA Crumbling Under Mobereola’s Watch
Claim: An online news platform, ShippingWorld News Magazine has claimed that NIMASA is crumbling under the Director General of the National Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dayo Mobereola citing controversial issues around the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme.
Verdict: Misleading.
Full Story: An online news platform, ShippingWorld News Magazine has published a series of claims against the Director General of the National Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dayo Mobereola whose tenure in office began in March 2024. See the screenshot below:
The story highlighted allegations against the new agency DG concerning the non-payment of school fees to some Nigerian cohorts of student cadets undergoing maritime-related courses across the globe.
It focused a petition against the DG of NIMASA and his Executive Director, Maritime Labour, and Cabotage Services, Mr. Jibril Abba by “a Vendor overseeing the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) at Centurion University” which threatened legal actions.
According to the news online, “CENTURION University and NIMASA are at daggers drawn over another set of 296 students who are at the risk of deportation following the refusal of NIMASA to honour its contractual obligations as specified in the memorandum of understanding signed between the Agency and the INSTITUTION.”
Other issues raised by the news platform include over 100 stranded cohorts from Greece, who were protesting at the NIMASA premises over the alleged “non-challant manner NIMASA had handled their welfare and other needs”.
The Nigerian Maritime Management and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is a regulatory and promotional maritime agency, created to fulfill its regulatory obligations through the NIMASA Act, (2007), Merchant Shipping Act, 2007, and Coastal and Inland Shipping Cobatage Act (2003).
Information retrieved from the Agency’s website shows that aside from its mandate of regulating and administering the activities of the Seafarers Standard and Security, NIMASA is also established solely to administer Maritime Safety, Maritime Labour, Shipping Regulation, promote Commercial Shipping and Carbotage activities, ensure Pollution Prevention and Control in the maritime environment.
The creation of NSDP
In 2008, the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) was initiated by NIMASA “with the sole mandate of training Nigerian youths to become seafarers and Naval Architects in Maritime Capacity Building”. Part of the mandates of the programme was to train Nigerian youths” in Marine Engineering, Nautical Sciences, and Naval Architecture in some of the best Maritime Training Institutions (MTIs) abroad and to position them to compete effectively in the global Maritime Industry as a means of developing the Nigerian maritime space.
As of 2023, Nigeria had a population of 25,610 seafarers, representing only 1.4% of the World’s 1,892,725 population. Going by one of the cardinal objectives of the programme, Nigerian seafarers/cadets are to replace foreign crews within two to three weeks of operations. While no credible data are available to suggest the population of Nigerian Indigenous seafarers, “a total of 11,956 Nigerian seafarers have been placed onboard Cabotage vessels as of 2023”.
Issues with the NSDP
There have been challenges with the NSDP in the past. Some of them reported here in 2024 has been cited as one of the banes of the programme since its inception. The programme has been the subject of investigations by the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) which once got a court order in 2018 to effect a final forfeiture of one of the Agency’s directors in a case of E578, 080 .00 diversion meant for the NSDP.
Trained cadets of the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme have often faced low employment status because they specialise in courses that are not in high demand, thereby unemployable. Recently, the International Transport Workers Federation suggested that over N16 billion investment under the NSDP has gone into the training of 2,476 cadets in 15 years but only 100 seafarers have gained employment on international merchant ships.
Lack of funding is another problem as some beneficiaries have decried what they describe as “the agency’s abandonment of them, as many who began the programme in 2012 are unable to complete it.” There have been instances of abandonment of overseas students on scholarship reported here in 2017, here in 2022, and here in 2024 either due to massive diversion of funds by officials or sheer insufficient funds to meet increasing school fees.
All the cases of infraction highlighted above among others have made NIMASA and its NSDP a cynosure of immense scrutiny in the eye of the public. One of these was highlighted in the online News platform, ShippingWorld Magazine when it suggested that:
“Things have completely fallen apart in Dayo Mobereola’s NIMASA who has spent only about six months into his 4-year tenure, and it is obvious that the Center cannot hold”
Are There Sufficient Pieces of Evidence that NIMASA is Crumbling Under Mobereola’s Watch? This was verified.
Verifications:
Our investigations confirmed the ministerial query to DG NIMASA, Dr. Mobereola on the petition by the vendor. The DG’s response to the query was also confirmed. Pieces of evidence have also shown that the current ED Maritime Labour and Cabotage Services is believed to be in the middle of the contract saga with SAMET, the vendor, for alleged breach of contract, among other likely issues of official misconduct. The NIMASA DG and his team have since denied any allegation of wrongdoing as published on the Agency’s Instagram page. See the screenshot below:
Findings show that there are 296 Nigerian Cadets schooling in Centurion University India under the NSDP whose school fees may not have been paid since January 2024. This preceded the tenure of the new DG of NIMASA, Dr. Dayo Mobereola. NIMASA has instituted an in-house review mechanism to ascertain that the students are genuinely pursuing approved courses of study as changes from such approved courses of study have financial implications for the agency. NIMASA spends millions of dollars annually on the sponsorship of the students. Pressure is being mounted on the management of NIMASA to pay the school fees without verification and sanitization of the process.
Conclusion,
Crumbling is the breaking or falling apart into small fragments, especially as part of a process of deterioration. According to Forbes Burton, professional management accountants, signs of a crumbling organization would include declining sales, inability to pay wages, and high staff turnover. None of these has been established in NIMASA. It is fulfilling its core mandate, without any division and the office environment is peaceful.
There is, therefore, insufficient evidence that NIMASA is crumbling under the watch of the new DG, Dr. Dayo Mobereola as claimed. The NSDP is one out of several other obligations of the Agency and there are no pieces of evidence to suggest shortcomings in its core mandates. More importantly, the raging controversies around the programme predated the tenure of Dr. Dayo Mobereola. Therefore, the headline is misleading.
