As Nigeria sets to host the 2019 Global Maritime Security Conference, in Abuja, come October 7 to 9, the Director-General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA has said that security of the African Maritime space will dominate various discussions at the event.
Speaking recently to journalists in Abuja, Dakuku explained that “To further address the issue of insecurity in the region’s maritime domain, Nigeria will host the 2019 Global Maritime Security Conference from 7th to 9th of October in Abuja.
“At the continental and regional levels, a number of maritime initiatives and strategies that focus on developing the maritime sector in Africa already exist.
“It is our hope that the conference will rise with the ‘ABUJA DECLARATION’ on ending insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea”, he said.
Meanwhile, the global organisers of the conference have said that addressing implementations of various charters and laws will be looked into.
This is as they reiterated that African has various charters, yet their implementations have remained unsatisfactory.
These charters included: the 2050 Africa Integrated Maritime Strategy (2050 AIMS), African Maritime Transport Charter (AMTC), Maritime Transport Plan of Action, ECOWAS Integrated Maritime Strategy (EIMS), Lome Charter, Djibouti Code of Conduct, among others.
According to GMSC organisers, “In acknowledging that they are bold and important steps to develop the maritime sector in Africa, an overview of the initiatives and strategies reveal that their full implementation and actualization of set objectives is somewhat constrained.
“They are yet to be translated fully from policy statements and declarations stage to that of concrete and practical action required to deal with the numerous challenges confronting the sector. The situation is more worrisome when viewed against the backdrop of increasing maritime security incidents in the Gulf of Guinea region.
“The objective of the discourse is accordingly to evaluate the various initiatives to ascertain the extent to which they address maritime insecurity specifically and the implementation approach. To be considered also is the issue of collective ‘ownership’ of the security initiatives in place within the Gulf of Guinea, (though having been sponsored or formulated with the involvement of external actors and partners); and the imperative of working out ‘homegrown’ modalities for collective regional action vis-à-vis mobilization of human, material and financial resources. As additional measures to improve our maritime security governance and architecture attention will be given to the issue of agreeing on a clearly defined demarcation of different responsibilities of various organizations in the region coordinating maritime security.
“Furthermore, the roundtable discussion will look at the type and level of assistance required to help the Gulf of Guinea countries streamline the multiple initiatives into a coordinated framework to efficiently achieve the set objectives.”
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