The National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) has urged states of the federation to collaborate with the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, through NIWA, to achieve safer inland water transportation.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of NIWA, Mr Bola Oyebamiji made the call at a stakeholders meeting on safety and insecurities on inland waterways, on Thursday.
He pointed out that NIWA, according to its Act and the recent judgement of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, had the undisputed right to regulate activities on the inland waters and its Rights of Way.
He added that this does not foreclose collaboration and cooperation from the states as they do with other agencies including the security establishments.
“We, therefore, call on the states to encourage and collaborate with us in the area of training, construction of jetties, route marking and provision of standardised boats and passenger ferries for their people to ease their daily commuting,” he said.
Oyebamiji noted that transportation on the inland waterways deserved greater attention even than road transportation.
He said that comparatively, the inland waterways had a greater capacity to transport more passengers and goods than other modes of transportation at relatively cheaper cost and faster.
He added that NIWA had positioned 350 Water Marshals to strengthen its presence on the inland waters and sensitise boat operators and passengers across different loading platforms on safety.
“Also, within the first half of the year, we have trained more than 350 boat operators and drivers.
“We have equally continued to remove impediments from the waters to achieve smooth navigation. We have realigned hundreds of our navigational buoys to ensure that channels are marked for captains and boat operators.
“To demonstrate our strong commitment to improved infrastructural facilities across the waterways, with the 2024 budget, we have started gradual but steady improvement of our jetties, and mooring facilities among others, through the implementation of the 2024 Capital budget,” he said.
He noted that the deployment of operational assets such as boats, personal safety equipment and personnel was to strengthen operations to safeguard the commuting public on the inland waters.
The NIWA boss noted that however, despite what they had done and still doing, the need to have a strong collaboration across all our operational bases cannot be overemphasised.
Oyebamiji said that to invent new ways of doing business, as a matter of policy, NIWA had chosen to communicate with people in their local languages within their comfort zones.
He added that they had implemented sensitisation programmes in more than 25 states of Nigeria.
“Within the last 90 days, our officers have appeared on more than 26 radio and television stations across Nigeria to speak about the Transportation Code and the need to promote safer inland waterways.
“The launch of the Transportation Code and the harvest of numerous projects and assets were deployed to inject efficiency into how we conduct our businesses,” he said.
He said that today’s gathering was yet another in the series of other ideas conceived by the minister to push NIWA to achieve.
“Now, this meeting, has brought the stakeholders together for a critical appraisal of our challenges with a view to finding solutions to them and we are indeed grateful for the ministers leadership,” he said.
