The Minister of Transport, Alhaji Yusuf Suleiman has constituted a 12-member committee to work out modalities of having indigenous ship owners transport crude oil.

The Minister also presided over a meeting with stakeholders in the maritime industry in Lagos, asked the committee to submit its report within two weeks.

The committee comprised representatives of the Federal Ministry of Transport, the Nigerian Port Authority (NPA), Nigeria Customs Services (NCS) Indigenous Ship-Owners Association of Nigeria (ISAN) , Federal Ministry of Finance and other representatives.

Suleiman said the ministry was making efforts to ensure indigenous ship-owners secure government’s approval to move crude oil.  This is coming on the heels of reported loss of over N1.57 trillion by Nigeria through the carrying of its crude oil by foreign shipping firms.

He explained that there was need  for the Federal Government and the Nigerian National  Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to approve the shipment of oil based on cost, insurance and freight (CIF).

The minister noted  that a lot of money that would have been collected by government agencies got missing through sales of the crude oil based on Free On Board (FOB0.  he said such sales pattern had led to revenue leakages and stunted growth in the maritme industry.

Suleiman said the ministry would discuss with NNPC to be sure that its operations would not be jeopardized by the indigenous ship owners.  “we will talk to NNPC to start the process of freight and asked the shipping companies to start carrying bilateral cargoes”, he said. 

He said the NNPC and the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources had insisted that indigenous ship owners must show that they are capable of effective handling the cargoes.

Suleiman said in doing this, government would not have a repeat of what happened during the cargo allocation era.

If the cargoes are given to indigenous shipping companies the economy would develop and more job opportunities would be created, the minister said.

On controversies over, the waiver clause, in the Cabotage Act,  the Minister said in line with what obtains in other countries, he agreed that for any company that applied for waiver or exemption, the request could be forwarded to ISAN for their own inputs, saying, this would determine whether on indigenous company could handle it or not.

The chairman of ISAN, Chief Isaac Jolapamo said more than 200 ships owned by members of the association, mostly tankers and off-dock supply vessels were old.

He recalled that sometimes the association asked for ship repair and refurbishment fund so that some of the old vessels could be repaired, but nothing was done by government.

He called for strict  enforcement of the cabotage law for government to generate enough revenue for the Cabotage Vessel Financing  Fund (CVFF) for Nigeria to acquire new vessels.