Over 1,850 workers of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) are afraid of losing their jobs, following the decision of the Federal Government to exclude the agency from the 2023 budget, The Nation has learnt.
Our investigation revealed that the number of workers on NIMASA’s payroll increased from 1,110 in 2011 to 1,856 in 2022.
Our correspondent gathered yesterday that many senior officers of the agency were not happy about the decision of the Federal Government to apply “cost of collection policy” on the apex maritime regulatory agency in the country.
It was learnt that attempts by a “budget mafia” in the agency’s bureaucracy may have scuttled the promotion of some workers based on new innovations introduced into the 2023 budgetary allocations by the Federal Government.
It was also gathered that many of the top officials of NIMASS, who had been saddled with the responsibility of preparing the budget in their departments, became jittery that they could be probed, if the agency failed to meet its core responsibility based on the huge salaries and wages of its workers.
One of the three Executive Directors (ED) of the agency told The Nation that many of his colleagues were startled by the revelation that the number of workers had increased geometrically in the last 10 years.
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The ED, who described the manner of employing more officers into the agency as mind-blowing, noted that an average of 70 people joined the agency every year in the last 10 years.
Investigation also revealed that the agency now has 1,865 workers on its payroll with a large chunk of the newly recruited officers and other categories of workers coming from the Niger Delta.
NIMASA, apart from training its workers, pays children’s education, dressing, entertainment, passage and 15 per cent productivity allowances, among others, to its workers.
In 2011, there were 11 Grade 17 officers working in NIMASA but that number has now increased to 14.
The number of Grade 16 officers working with the agency in 2011 was 23 but The Nation can confirm that the figure has now increased to 103.
Also, while there were 43 Grade 15 officers in the agency in 2011, that figure rose to 165 in 2022.
Investigation revealed that Grade Levels 14 and 13 officers have also increased from 83 and 62 in 2011 to 205 and 217 within the period under review.
Also, there were 50 workers on Grade Level 12 and 127 others on Grade 10 in 2011, and the figures have both increased to 274 this year, pushing the number of workers on the payroll of NIMASA to the high side.
Although findings have shown that there are no Levels 1 and 2 officers in the agency, the number of workers on Grade Level 8 to Grade 3 have also increased.
A source in the Ministry of Transportation told our correspondent that the omission of NIMASA in the 2023 budget has given credence to speculations that the Federal Executive Council (FEC) had bought into the Senate’s proposal to remove some maritime industry agencies from the budget and place them on the “cost of collections”.
The source added that the decision of the government to exit NIMASA from the 2023 budgetary provision does not portend a good omen for the apex maritime regulatory agency in the country.
“Statutorily, NIMASA is not a revenue generating agency but a regulator. Therefore, the decision of the government to exit NIMASA from budgetary provision may affect its ability to carry out its core functions and its huge number of workers,” the source said.