Shippers’ Council, NIMASA Move Against  Excessive  Charges By Shipping Lines

The Nigerian Shipper Council, NSC, and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA,  have announced intent to stop  the sustained arbitrary charges by international shipping lines for vessels coming to the country.

Hassan Bello, the Executive Secretary/ Chief Executive Officer, CEO,  disclosed this when paid a working visit to the Director General of NIMASA, Dr Bashir Jamoh.

He emphasized the need  to eliminate most of these surcharges that have continued to challenge Nigeria’s trade.

He said:”The surcharges are supposed to be temporal to deal with unusual situations but some have become permanent like the war risk charges which I am sure that the Director-General (Jamoh) will know that as soon as we solve the security problem the war risk charges will go.

“But even more important, we need our two organizations to work side by side to ensure that we know what these surcharges are because these surcharges are unilaterally and sometimes arbitrarily fixed without the knowledge, consent or even informing the people who pay these charges, especially the shippers in Nigeria and sometimes those of West Africa.

“You might recall the battle we had last year to stop the peak season surcharge which would have been a lot of money but when we all came together we were able to at least stop the general application for cargoes coming into the country, otherwise with the Covid-19 and those charges, we could have an inflationary trend that could affect our economy and that is not good,” he noted.

 In his remarks,Bashir Jamoh, the Director-General of NIMASA, Bashir Jamoh, said the number of attacks on visiting vessels has reduced drastically since the cancellation of the Secured Anchorage Area, SAA, by the government.

He said:“The Executive Secretary (Bello) made mention of the war risk insurance; we were recording about six attacks per week, making it an average of one attack per day.

“Since the cancellation of SAA to date, we have recorded only two attacks. So meaning that we are getting to the level where we can say in two or three months we recorded only one attack.We are working to collate the attacks for six months to be able to generate the number of attacks to challenge the international community why we should continue to pay war risk insurance in Nigeria.