Africa-Press – Nigeria. Staff members of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) have raised concerns over the management’s approval of a proposal to concession a sizeable portion of the agency’s revenue stream to a private corporation.
If approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), the partnership will lead to 13.5 per cent of NIMASA’s revenue going to the company, Royal Diadem Consults Ltd, for a period of 15 years.
The company proposes to invest N7.54 billion in developing what it calls a Maritime Electronic Management System (MEMS). According to the terms of the deal, most of the investment (75 per cent) will be offered as a loan, while the remaining 25 per cent will come in the form of equity.
The company, Royal Diadem Consults, says the project will create an “advanced digital platform for managing NIMASA’s revenue-related IT systems and maritime operations with a view to enhancing the Agency’s operational efficiency, transparency, and regulatory compliance across the maritime sector”.
It will be implemented as a public-private partnership.
The electronic services offered through the project aim to address electronic registration and certification, automated waste management and pollution control, cabotage and terminal operations, seafarer and incident management, maritime security and surveillance, and an integrated stakeholder engagement portal.
Also, the company states that the concession agreement could lead to 95 per cent regulatory compliance within two years, reduce processing time for certifications by 50 per cent in the first year, increase revenue by 30 per cent in three years, create 1000 jobs in three years, lead to total monitoring of vessels within two years, and lead to a 20 per cent reduction in maritime pollution.
However, NIMASA workers and maritime security experts stress that the investment is not significant enough to implement grand proposal and is too paltry to justify handing over 13.5 per cent of the agency’s revenue for that long.
According to NIMASA’s 2022 annual report, it generated revenue of N129 billion. If the agency continues to generate this amount for the next 15 years, that means, going by the proposed concession agreement, the company would be making over N17.4 billion annually and about N261 billion at the end of the contract — a 3,380 per cent increase compared to the investment.
Staff members, who have access to the business case report from Royal Diadem Consults, described the proposal as a “glorified Electronic Resource Planning system”, serving purposes that could be handled through standard licensing and annual service fees.
They also said the proposal does not contain realistic step-by-step processes of how the goals outlined would be achieved.
“They’re presenting it as a solution that will boost revenue by 30% over three years without any enforcement, just improved billing. The reality is, they’re not deploying any hard assets,” one worker said in a message shared with other staff in May.
“What’s most concerning is there’s no performance benchmark. Even if revenue stays the same, they’re entitled to that 15% year after year. Over 15 years, that’s a massive long-term payout for a system that offers no real operational responsibility or risk-sharing. It looks like an attempt to concession NIMASA’s revenue stream is flying under the radar.”
A NIMASA employee, who has worked with the agency for over 10 years across different projects/units (including Deep Blue Project, Revenue Optimisation, Enforcement, Fees Review and Billing System Management), believes the scope of the project is overstretched and under-resourced.
He added that NIMASA could easily bear the proposed costs and does not need a revenue-sharing concession to implement a project of this scale.
The staff, who pleaded anonymity, said, “The Agency can pay for the project out of its current revenues, like it did with other more substantial projects in the past, like the Deep Blue Project, which the Agency spent $214 million on with a logistics budget of N7 billion yearly during the project’s implementation. The Agency also spent a significant amount of money on the design and implementation of its Sage X3 ERP project without the need to concession any part of its revenue.”
He explained that the issues NIMASA is facing pertain to the lack of enforcement capacity to ensure compliance with existing laws and regulations.
“Although the use of technology can aid with that, the lack of enforcement capabilities in the project will not allow for the project to deliver its expected results,” he added.
The staff member also noted that the merits of the project were considered properly before it was approved.
“To the utter surprise of most of the staff, there was no elaborate review committee containing members of all relevant operations departments as the scope of the project impacts on them and their assessment of the project could have led to a more wholesome outcome as issues currently being observed in the project would have been raised in its examination.”
Another employee who has worked at NIMASA for decades across multiple departments, including MEM, SDD, Safety, Cabotage, FSD, Audit, and Deep Blue, described the proposed concession agreement as having multiple red flags.
Asking not to be named, he alleged, “The project in totality is a fraud meant to defraud the agency and keep it struggling financially to meet its core mandate of safety, security, and shipping development.
“From my experience, investing a mere N7.5 billion on a MEMS project is significantly not enough to prompt an increase in revenue to a level where we should guarantee a return of up to 15 per cent to anyone. There is no investment in critical maritime surveillance and enforcement infrastructure, no shared operational responsibility, and no asset deployment.”
The staff also questioned why the proposal review was done in secret and hidden away from the majority of relevant departments.
In an open letter to NIMASA Director-General, Dr Dayo Mobereola, circulated on WhatsApp on Saturday, May 3, 2025, concerned staff members described the proposal as a fraudulent, “under-the-table attempt” to concession the agency for a “mere N7.5 billion”.
The controversy is coming amid growing discontent about the administration of the director-general, Mobereola.
In another open letter circulated among employees of the agency, signed by ‘The Staff You’ve Chosen to Ignore’, NIMASA workers lamented the neglect of their welfare.
Parts of the letter, released on April 20, 2025, read, “Since your assumption of office, you have offered nothing but disappointment. No salary structure. No promotions. No welfare packages. No basic staff gestures like Sallah or Christmas rice — a tradition you’ve casually discarded. You’ve shut down the staff health check initiative like it meant nothing. Clearly, you do not care. But understand this: your indifference will come back to haunt you.
“Enough of the lies. Enough of the empty speeches. Enough of the silence. If you have no intention of implementing the approved June/July salary structure from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, then brace yourself — because we will not sit quietly while you trample on our rights.”
Also, in another open letter, Mobereola was accused of not implementing the hardship allowance and new salary structure, despite their approval by the Federal Government.
“The agency is stagnant, and this can be seen clearly not only in internal affairs but also externally – there has been no new operational development or enforcement drive on IMO conventions across departments. It feels like we’re on autopilot – and not in a good way,” the letter said.
In the same vein, in a letter to the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, dated March 18, 2025, NIMASA staff, under the aegis of ‘Citizens United Against Corruption and Impunity’, accused the agency’s leadership of perverting procurement processes, inflating contracts, and abusing estacode through frequent foreign trips.
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