The Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN ) says it lost many seafarers to sea pirate attacks in 2018 due to the insecurity on Nigerian waterways.
President of MWUN, Comrade Adewale Adeyanju, stated this in a statement on Tuesday.
Comrade Adeyanju, who also lamented the dilapidated access roads to the nation’s seaports; Apapa Port and Tin Can Island Port, said the poor state of the access roads had caused many investors to abandon Nigeria for neighbouring ports.
The unionist appealed to the Federal Government to ensure that roads to the ports were fixed in order to enhance the flow of traffics and reduce the huge gridlocks experinced along the ports roads.
Descrbing the bad roads as a major challenge, especially the Tin Can Island Port access road, Adeyanju insisted that the state of the roads hinders investors from doing business in Lagos ports.
According to the president, “Our expectation for 2019 is very high in the sense that, we pray that this year would be better than last year. We lost so many investors because of the bad road, now that the road is on the verge of completion, we pray good things would happen this year”.
On the rising wave of sea pirates on the nation’s waterways, Adeyanju commended the Nigeria Maritime Administrations and Safety Agency (NIMASA) for doing a good job in tackling piracy. He urged the agency to double its efforts in 2019.
“We have been having the security challenges for a couple of years, but they are trying their best, but we want government to strengthen them and empower them to do more”, he said.
“It has even reduced, because I could remember that last year, we lost so many seafarers and we lost so many investors as well as a result of piracy coming into our waters, now what we need to do is pray that this year would be better than last year”, he said.
The MMUN president said that safety kits for dockworkers had improved, noting that kitting of dockworkers was part of the CBA agreement recently signed by the union, NIMASA and terminal operators.