Godfrey Bivbere
18 April 2012, Sweetcrude, LAGOS – CHAIRMAN, Indigenous Ship Owners Association of Nigeria, ISAN, Chief Isaac Jolapamo, says Nigeria loses more than N2 trillion in capital flight to foreign ship owners yearly.
Jolapamo spoke, Tuesday, at the extra-ordinary general meeting of the association in Lagos. He said the nation had failed to take advantage of its vast untapped maritime potentials.
Maintaining that the maritime sector was capable of providing employment for about five million Nigerians directly or indirectly, he lamented that Nigeria had been unable to take advatage of opportunities provided by the sector to provide jobs for the teeming youths who are unemployed.
“It is disheartening to note that Nigeria with a large army of teeming youths created by unemployment, had failed to take full advantage of the untapped potentials in our maritime industry to engage gainfully these youths, giving them hope and to keep them away from mischief. After all, an idle hand is the devil’s workshop,” he said:
Jolapamo urged ship owners to place the future of the industry above their personal interests and bury their differences to move the industry forward.
The association chairman said it was important that indigenous operators participated in the carriage of oil and gas to make government’s transformation agenda realisable.
He said: “We have identified participation in the carriage of Nigerian crude oil and gas, general cargoes of about 150 million tonnes per annum and the domestic cabotage trade as very important for our socio-economic development to make the transformation agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration realisable.”
He said other developed and developing nations had used their maritime industry to develop their economies, citing the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada as some of the developed countries that had fully exploited their maritime capability.
He also pointed to India, South Korea, Malaysia and Indonesia as other examples of developing nations that had used their maritime resources to develop their economies.
Jolapamo argued that no nation which neglected its maritime resources ever developed, and urged indigenous ship owners to move away from things that divide them.
