It was a gathering of who is who in the maritime sector to welcome and interact with the new Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime and Safety Agency, Dr. Dayo Mobereola. The meeting atmosphere showed that the stakeholders gave him the green light and welcomed him with open arms. Members of the maritime establishment poured out their minds and put their worries and anxieties on the table, including the issue of gender balance in the sector.

For about four hours, the new helmsman and his executive management team listened with rapt attention to the challenges in the sector and the expected transformation to navigate it forward. Despite the stakeholders’ high expectations, there were no daggers drawn. And, it was not all about the agency’s demands but solid suggestions also emerged in a commendable atmosphere of friendliness and warm felicitations.

Setting the ball rolling, Capt. Emmanuel Iheanacho, as Chairman of the occasion said the event was to “give honour to one of us who has dedicated himself to contributing his quota to the revival of the blue economy”. Describing Dr. Mobereola as a thorough-bred professional, he recalled their first meeting at the University of Wales at Cardiff where he was then pursuing his doctorate at a very young age. “He is a high flier who comes to this job with cognate professional experience and historical commitment to excellence”. For two months since his appointment, the new DG has dissected the sector and consulted informally with relevant persons and groups to have a full grasp of the sector. “Today we gather to officially unveil him to all”.

The well-planned event had a paper presentation titled: Marine and Blue Economy: Navigating to the Promised Land by Dr. Emeka Akabogu, who challenged the new NIMASA helmsman to unlock the untapped economic opportunities in the organization by simply staying focused on NIMASA’s core mandate and “not trying to be everything to everybody”. He charged him as the captain of the ship MV NIMASA to ensure that potentials are realised in line with the expectations of where stakeholders want the maritime sector to be in Nigeria. Apart from maritime administration, and shipping administration, the generality of Nigerians also wants the sector to generate employment and create wealth to improve the lots of the common people.

He decried the paucity of important data like the total number of vessels registered in Nigeria, the active vessels, chartered vessels, the total number of Seafarers, and total investment in dockyard activities within a period must be readily available. There should be an effective security approach to checkmate piracy and illegal maritime activities. Data must be available to show whether the industry is dominated by foreigners or not and canvassed for gender balance in the sector.

Other industry problems highlighted or paraphrased included – environmental regulations, digitalization, rising costs of doing business, real-time tracking and reliable ship registration, and human resources issues. To correct some of these issues, Dr. Akabogu advocated for clarity of policy and agenda, an improvement on data gathering using technology, setting out the minimum industry standards, accountability on the part of NIMASA and the industry, and correcting the gaping disparity in data available locally compared to that available internationally.

At least three other speakers spoke on the issue of gender imbalance in the maritime sector and specifically in NIMASA. Statistics show that only 9.3 percent of females exist among Nigeria’s seafarers. At the Maritime Academy of Nigeria. (MAN), Oron, only 26 of the 250 students (10.4 percent) are females. While women represent only 1.2% percent of the global seafarer workforce as per the BIMCO/ICS 2021 Seafarer Workforce Report.

They submitted that women should be represented in senior, technical, and professional roles in the maritime sector. There should be equal opportunities for men as well as women to obtain positions to sail on vessels according to their individual preferences. It is common knowledge that women often struggle to secure leadership or specialized positions due to ingrained biases. The lack of female representation in the upper ranks of the maritime hierarchy contributes to the perpetuation of these disparities, creating a challenging cycle to break.

In the Nigerian maritime industry today, women actively involved in the clearing processes are less than 20 percent of the total licensed agents in the sector. Findings have also shown that most ship owners do not like having female seafarers on board their vessels, a development that has left many qualified female seafarers jobless while their male counterparts are allowed to work even when some of them may not be as qualified as some of the females.

The Managing Director of OceanDeep Services Limited, Mrs. Rollens Macfoy spoke on the need for women to be given equal opportunity in the sector as their male counterparts and appealed to Dr. Mobereola to ensure gender balance and capacity building for women in NIMASA.

She noted that: “Some Nigerian ship-owners do not engage the services of female Seafarers. You need to assist us in speaking to ship owners to let them know that a woman is the same thing as a man. What men are doing these days can’t be compared to what women can achieve. The ships themselves are not built in such a way to allow women. They will tell you they only have facilities for males; there are no facilities for women so we can’t take women.

Corroborating her, Mrs Laitan Williams-Hastrup convener and founder of Ocean Ambassadors Foundation, a non-profit organization with a primary vision of getting the upcoming generation interested in the maritime sector and carving a niche at an early age said the maritime sector should seek more involvement of women, youth and especially the girl child.

She also clamoured for a reduction in the payable duty on vessel acquisition and urged the NIMASA boss to activate the Cabotage Act and treat cases of criminals caught in the sector speedily. She highlighted the disparity in wages and appealed to the NIMASA DG to look into the disparities between the wages of local Seafarers and their foreign counterparts.

Without a doubt, a lot was placed on the table for the new NIMASA boss and his management team. Responding, Dr. Mobereola thanked them for the warm and enthusiastic welcome event and assured them that all their comments and suggestions were well noted and would be acted upon. The automation process he said would commence immediately while he would also look into the gender issue as raised and make necessary amends as appropriate.