NIMASA acquires special satellite system to monitor maritime domain

THE Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, has said that the agency has acquired a unique satellite system with capacities to identify any kind of vessel entering or leaving the country’s maritime domain.
NIMASA’s Director General, Mr. Akpobolokemi, who revealed this while receiving the Maritime Man of the year award under the 2014 Nigerian Advancement Awards series organised by Newaves Innovation, in Abuja, said the agency under his leadership has built robust maritime domain awareness architecture in the last three and half years.
“We revived the trend from having seen the stakeholders seeing us from the perception as a contract issuing agency to an agency that is saddled with the responsibility of maintaining law and order in our maritime domain, ensuring safety, security and protection of the marine environment.” he said
“This consciousness made us to come up with a four point agenda that is in line with the Transformation Agenda of Mr President. Essentially what we have been able to do and what we are doing is part of what the President has in stock for a better Nigeria.
“Our satellite system is on board, unique with special qualities that can identify any kind of vessel, entering or leaving our maritime domain. We have a radar system that is on-going. We have the capacity to enforce compliance of our regulatory responsibility because of the many platforms that we have”.
Akpobolokemi explained further that in the area of capacity building, “we have done wonderfully well. More needs to be done yet. But precisely, we have been able to establish a maritime university.
He said the way the Maritime University is being structured, it is going to compete with any maritime university in the world.
“We have been able to establish a science and technical college. It has started academic programmes. It is going to be the feeder to the university to bring middle level man power.
“We have been able to establish six maritime institutes in six different universities across the country, within the past three years plus. We are developing a ship yard.
“Also in the area of capacity building which I have been talking about, presently we have over 2,500 Nigerians in different parts of the world, studying degree programmes in maritime, precisely in marine engineering, Navy architecture and nautical sciences.