The Managing Director of Union Admiralty Ltd (UAL), Ibi Seddon, has blamed the dominance of foreign ships in the lifting of refined petroleum products from mother ships offshore to the storage facilities to the fact that the Nigerian owned ships are not sea-worthy, Vanguard reports.
Seddon explained that despite the Cabotage Act which restricts trade within the nation’s coastal waters for Nigerian owned vessels, product owners and owners of mother vessels still prefer foreign ships because the indigenous owned ships are not in class.
He explained that when a ship is in class (it meets all conditions both in terms of maintenance and insurance for engaging in international trade), the mother vessels would prefer to deal with them in case an accident occurs.
“There are very few Nigerian vessels that are up to date in their class, in their insurance and in their paper work that are involved in the transfer of refined products from offshore to storage facilities onshore” he said.
On the argument that most of the classification bodies make it difficult for Nigerian vessels to be classed, Seddon said it is not true because there are about five classification societies and that all of them cannot conspire not to classify ships from Nigeria.
