TELL Magazine

There is good news about Nigeria’s Floating Dry Dock said to have been abandoned since it was acquired in 2018. The dock which was acquired at the cost of $50 billion by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA was intended to enhance the development of the maritime industry in Nigeria. Stakeholders had complained that the floating dock was left idle for too long after its acquisition. A floating dock is a submersible platform which is designed for the repair of vessels. It can be navigated to the location of a disabled vessel at sea, used to carry the said vessel and take it back to base where the repair will be carried out. The acquisition of the floating dock elicited a great deal of excitement in 2018, but maritime stakeholders became apprehensive when it appeared that the authorities had abandoned it at the Naval Dockyard, Victoria Island, Lagos. In 2021 the Association of Maritime Engineers and Surveyors, AMES raised an alarm that the dry dock had been abandoned by the authorities.
Now, the story has changed, and stakeholders can cheer. Dr. Bashir Jamoh, director general of NIMASA has given assurance that the government had not abandoned the floating dock, adding that it would soon start to make money for the country. Dr. Jamoh disclosed this while speaking at the Institute of Maritime Studies, IMS, at the University of Lagos. He said the country will realise N1 billion monthly from the use of the floating dry dock. Already NIMASA had started to sentitise governments of littoral states on how they can take advantage of the facility.
Apparently throwing light on the said abandonment, Jamoh said three agencies are responsible for the deployment of the dock. These, aside from NIMASA, are “The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), (which) provides the location for the establishment of the dry-dock (the Hardware) (and) the Infrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission (ICRC) (which) midwifed the public-private partnership to make it bankable and viable (the Software)”. The ICRC gave a certificate of approval to NIMASA last year for the running of the public/private partnership.
This is also coming at a time the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL has decided to assist investors to purchase ships so it would not need to go out of the country to hire ships for its operations.