Nigeria’s maritime industry has been on the front burner but with little efforts towards adopting global policies and standards. Managing Director of the NLNG Shipping and Marine Services Limited (NSML), Abdulkadir Ahmed, speaks with ADAKU ONYENUCHEYA on the limitations and what needs to be done to reverse the trend.

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has reeled out shipping decarbonisation objectives and timelines to achieve net zero targets. Could you give us an insight into Nigeria’s readiness to key into the objective?
For the greenhouse gas emission and decarbonisation objectives in the shipping industry, which are in line with energy transition and climate change, we all have a duty and responsibility to live and utilise the resources sustainably so we can pass it to the next generation. This requires us not to pollute our environment and ensure the effective utilisation of resources. This is where the argument around greenhouse gas emission, impact and decarbonisation comes in.

Decarbonisation and its regulation is an opportunity, which boils down to competitiveness and relevance. All of us are in this business to pursue relevance. We equally have a responsibility to protect our environment.

The Nigerian maritime industry is lagging behind the rest of the world in terms of standards, decarbonisation, development and acceptance of the Nigerian Certificate of Competence (CoC) internationally and that is what we have been working on with NIMASA and others.

In the last six years, everything has changed in terms of decarbonisation and if you look at the evolution of different things from the monitoring down to the reduction and new technologies, everything has changed.

The fact is that we have advanced so much technologically and we need to ensure such advancement does not come at a detriment to the environment and the future sustainability of life. Part of it is looking at how we consume and emit into the environment and shipping is one critical area in terms of that because shipping has become very central to the world economy. It is that link that binds global trade.

We know that historically, shipping is one of the major emitters of greenhouse gas. There has been an increased focus in terms of cleaning up shipping operations to make it more efficient to ensure we decarbonise our processes and contribute towards the movement to net zero. This is being driven primarily by IMO, which has a regulation that requires a progressive reduction of greenhouse gas emission by 2050 where the expectation is net zero. The target is 40 per cent by 2030.

We at NMSL and NLNG subscribe fully to that and we have our decarbonisation objective as a group to drive the change in terms of our operations so that we achieve that.

We are not just simply renewing our fleet using the same kind of technology, but we are taking advantage of emerging technologies to either retrofit or acquire new tonnages that are much more efficient so that our operations fully contribute towards the net zero objectives of IMO, Nigeria and NLNG.

The inland waterways are polluted with plastic and pose a danger to shipping operations as well as water transportation. How will the NSML clean waterways initiative address this menace?
The problem is prevalent everywhere and that is the major issue. We are sinking under plastic, and the problem is that we are oblivious of the danger. That in essence, is the purpose of the Clean Waterways Initiative, to highlight the problem.

Let us all know that the plastic bags and bottle disposal is wrong. Plastic basically never breaks down, it remains in the environment for millions of years. We are seeing the impact both on marine life and transportation. Others are focusing on their backyard, we need to start focusing on our own.

The impact of plastic is felt on the operations of marine. If you speak to people operating in our waterways, the tugboats, the little marine crafts, you will hear their plight. The engines are not lasting long enough now because of this.

The whole essence of the clean waterways is to start that discussion and create awareness across all stakeholders on the menace and impact of indiscriminate dumping of plastics in our waterways because we are a shipping and marine service company.

In terms of localisation of manpower capacity and provision of sea time for cadets of maritime institutions, what is the number of Nigerian seafarers working onboard your vessels?
The number of seafarers we have is related to the number of vessels we have under management. There is a maximum number of seafarers per vessel and therefore, we always ensure that we have the seafarers and books subject to a certain buffer relating to employability.

We have approximately 650 seafarers, but we are diversifying and growing the business. We started as purely managing and providing seafarers to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) fleet. But over the years, we have expanded that into managing LPG vessels.

We are currently supervising the construction of a new LPG vessel for a third party, a Nigerian entity in South Korea and the expectation is that the vessel will also come under our management and that will also provide opportunities to engage and employ Nigerian seafarers that will run it.

We are engaging with various entities including Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) with regards to the acquisition of vessels. The more we expand that side of our business in terms of vessels under our management, the more opportunities there will be for Nigerian seafarers to manage those vessels.

We equally as corporate citizens have a Nigerianisation objective, which we have met. Because we are international, there will be a need for a bit of cross-fertilisation of ideas and therefore we will always have foreign seafarers, but at every time within our books, we will always have 85 per cent of our seafarers being Nigerian.

We met that in 2022 and continue to do that and I am sure you have also heard that in March last year, the LPG vessel under our management achieved 100 per cent Nigerianisation on our coastal waters. That is something we are targeting and we will continue to review that.

At every point in time, we maintain a minimum of about 50 and 60 cadets onboard our vessels. Typically, we have partnerships to support the cadets to get their CoC and ensure they are ready for the market. We also provide a pool of cadets and seafarers for our use. But of course, we can’t absolve everybody; it all depends on the number of vessels. For us, it is giving them the required training so they can build a career in the global shipping and maritime industry.
India and the Philippines export seafarers, so giving them the skill set tool that they can work anywhere in the world is the intent.

Why do Nigerian seafarers still struggle for international acceptance with global certification?
Unfortunately, it is an ongoing activity with the acceptance of Nigeria’s certificate of competence internationally. The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is doing a lot about ensuring the CoCs are accepted internationally. The key element boils down to the comfort that we can provide internationally about the standards and a lot of money has been invested into Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron. They have done a lot in upgrading the academy.

For us in NSML, we have always been available and we will continue to support NIMASA with regards to pushing that because it also works in our favour. If the Nigerian CoCs are accepted internationally, it makes life easier for our seafarers to want to renew their CoCs. It also creates a large pool of resources. But there is no shortcut to it and that is one thing I will always make very clear.

Acceptance of CoCs looks bilateral, but there are some fundamentals towards the bilateral element, which is that the other party must be comfortable that the quality of the CoCs is at a sustainable level.

We will continue to support that because it’s in line with our vision and I will also emphasise that supporting the growth and development of the Nigerian maritime industry starts from the fundamentals of building capacity and ensuring competence in it.

How many vessels are currently under the management of NSML and what are your catchment areas?
We have 12 vessels under our management currently, which are 11 LNG vessels and one LPG vessel. The expectations in line with our growth and diversification objective are to grow the number. We started as an LNG vessels manager, we have now expanded into bringing LPG and we are hopeful that we will expand both fleet as well as move into oil tankers and products so that we cover the whole gamut of energy vessels under our management.

We are growing that side of the business slowly and it is a deliberate one. So, we don’t just over-expand beyond capacity. It must be sustainable to build. Our vessels go all over the world. We have vessels that are loading cargo in North America and delivering it to Europe, we have vessels loading cargo in Nigeria and delivering it to Europe, South Africa and the Far East, such as Japan, China, South Korea as well as the Indian subcontinent. The only area our vessels do not go to is Russia.

The only way you can have a vessel that can trade in all of these areas boils down to the comfort that those areas would have vis-a-vis your operations and that is where competence and flag assurance come into being. This is because you need to have a flag and capacity of the crew that is assured and people can vouch for.

That is why we must create and align ourselves to the global standards. We can have a Nigerian standard, but we should make sure it is not below the global standard.

Why are your vessels not registered with the Nigerian flag?
NLNG vessels are registered under a different flag for several factors. One is the registry. We have international ocean-going vessels and there has to be that level of comfort and assurance of the registry as well as acceptance of the registry internationally for a Nigerian-flagged vessel to operate and trade openly.

It is a work that is ongoing and we are participating in it at NSML and NLNG levels, engaging with NIMASA. We are part of that committee that has been set up to review what needs to be done so that the Nigerian flag and registry get to that level of international acceptance and for us it is a win-win situation once that is achieved. We will continue to support that because we believe if we can achieve that, it will support the development of the Nigerian maritime sector.