FORMER Transport Minister, Dr Abiye Sekibo has faulted a proposed bill to create a new Maritime Security Agency, MSA, arguing that the bill will completely take away the core functions of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, which is empowered to superintend the provision of security for shipping traffic and the ports.

In a statement, Sekibo said the National Security Adviser is not a statutory office that should appropriate the power to set up, monitor and oversee an agency as the bill in question has done.

The former minister posited that provision for the collection of taxes and levies from ship owners, including two percent of the value of the gross tonnage of in-bound and out-bound cargo in vessels coming in or departing from any port in Nigeria is ill-advised, adding that it will project Nigerian ports as the most expensive in the world.

He explained that the Presidential Implementation Committee on Maritime Safety and Security, PICOMSS, was essentially an adhoc committee that ought to have wound up its operation on the expiration of the 1 July 2004 deadline for member countries to meet new security status adopted by the global body.

"PICOMSS lacks the requisite equipment and trained manpower to undertake the assignment the proposed bill seeks to create.

"More importantly, it lacks knowledge of port structure, as well as ship and port interface," he added.

He stated that the Marine Police is vested with the responsibility of policing Nigeria's territorial waters up to three nautical miles beyond which the Nigeria Navy takes over to the limit of the country's exclusive economic zone.

He warned that the International Maritime Organisation, IMO, is an organ of the United Nations that recognizes and liaises with non-military maritime administration agencies.

Sekibo also stated that apart from Nigeria's minister of transport who is the arrow head at the IMO, only NIMASA and the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, have relationship with IMO, adding that it does not recognise nor relate with a military-like institution.

Explaining further, Sekibo said the International Ship and Port Facility Security, ISPS, Code on which the bill is anchored represent only two sections of the all encompassing Safety of Life at Sea, SOLAS, Convention of the IMO of which Nigeria is a signatory.

"The SOLAS Convention is just one of the numerous IMO conventions Nigeria has adopted and domiciled. Should a separate agency be set up to administer every convention which the bill in question suggests"? he queried.

He noted that the issue of commercial shipping and merchant marine activities are not within the control or administration of the military or any of its agencies.

"The proposed agency cannot be recognized by the IMO nor can it have any working relation with the UN agency," he stated.