No fewer than 120 ship wrecks and derelicts are impeding smooth navigation on Nigerian coastline and waterways.
It was learnt that it will cost government about N77.8 billion ($216 million) to remove them.
Shipwreck is the remains of a ship found either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water.
Already, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is planning how to implement Nairo Convention on ship wrecks.
The Nairobi Convention on wreck removal of 2007, which came into force on April 14, 2015, states that if a ship is declared wreck, the country’s maritime administration should publish information to that effect.
Under the convention, the owner of the wreck is expected to remove it within a certain period and if they don’t, it is declared a wreck and the maritime administration can now remove it and the owners would pay surcharge and pick up the wreck.
Also, it stated that maritime administration could sell the wreck, dispose it in order to cover the money spent in getting the wreck out of waters.
It was gathered that it cost not less than $1.8 million to tow a wrecks from the nation’s waters, which have been posing threat to navigational safety and hazards in the marine environment.
However, the country has no ship scrapping and recycling yard to dispose the vessels.
Because of this challenge, some shipowners were forced to tow their wrecks to Asia for recycling, while those who could not afford the cost of towing abandoned theirs, posing threats to navigational safety.
Half of the wrecks and derelicts are said to be domiciled in Lagos, while 60 of them are spread across Delta, Onne, Rivers and Calabar port channels.
According to the President of Shipowners Association of Nigeria (SOAN), Greg Ogbeifun, Nigeria had lost huge revenue to other countries due to lack of ship recycling yard.
He noted that some shipowners in the country had to go to China before their ships could be scrapped, spending huge amount of money.
Ogbeifun noted that ship recycling allowed materials from the ship to be made into new products.
The president added that modern ships have a lifespan of between 25 and 30 years before refitting, repair, corrosion, metal fatigue.
He said that lack of spare parts had rendered some of them uneconomical to operate.
Ogbeifun also said that the ship recycling yards could be a panacea to revamping Nigeria steel industry, noting that a vibrant ship recycling sector would drive industrialisation.
Besides, he said that the high number of ship wrecks and scraps in Nigerian waterways could feed the steel industry as well as offer huge financial projects to the shipping, manufacturing, agriculture and service industry.
Also, the National Chairman of Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture (MENA), Charles Otuonye, explained that a vibrant ship recycling sector could drive industrialisation and create jobs.
He added that government could make ship recycling economically viable by supporting some shipyards to carry out ship breaking.
According to him, ship wrecks could provide steel metal, which could be processed to produce ingots and billets, which act as feedstock to other steel plants such as Osborne Rolling Mills for the production of profile, rods, mild steel and high tensile ribbed bars from billets.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), has said that the government would review the rules guiding the removal of shipwrecks from Nigerian waterways and coastlines.
NIMASA’s Director-General, Dakuku Peterside, said in Abuja that the agency was working under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Transportation to review wreck removal process in order to make Nigerian navigable waters safer for navigation by all.
He said that the agency would implement the Nairobi Convention 2007.
Comment here