AN environmentalist, Prince David Omaghomi has raised the alarm that due to lack of appropriate maritime laws in the country, foreigners have resorted to dumping of ship wrecks in the nations waterways.
This is even as Omaghomi stated that the development has led to over 3,000 shipwrecks littering the nation’s coastline.
Omagbomi, who is the Executive Director of Eco Restoration Foundation, a non-governmental organization, said this while addressing newsmen recently in Lagos.
Omagbomi said that lack of appropriate maritime law is turning Nigeria into a dumping ground for wrecked ships because people found it convenient to sink ships from other parts of the world on Nigerian coastal waters to avoid bearing the cost.
He said shipwrecks in turn caused various problems that impacted negatively on the environment, hence the need to improve the capacity of the Nigerian Navy on protection of the nation’s coastlines.
“We have to save our coastline by implementation of policies, legislation and by providing the Nigerian Navy with enough coastal awareness to enforce Nigeria’s territorial integrity, even from the perspective of environmental hazards like ship wrecks.
“Some people take insurance from insurance companies abroad, they then come over here to dump the ships on our coastline because they are supposed to spend money on decommissioning the ship.
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“When a ship has served its life time, you are supposed to take it to a dockyard and dismember it, recycle the metals; but they avoid such expenses, make money from insurance and they dump the vessels in the Nigerian coastline where nobody cares,” said Omaghomi.
He said Nigeria is being ridiculed as the shipwreck graveyard of the world.
“Nigeria has no legislation or enforcement of existing legislations that help people to remove ship wrecks. So people find Nigeria a favourable ground to dump their ships that are no longer in use.
“There are particular winds on the Atlantic ocean that pushes abandoned ships to the Bight of Benin which is the area on the Atlantic coast that Nigerian shorelines fall within,” he added.
Omaghomi said the money approved for some concerned government agencies in annual budgets for the removal of shipwrecks were usually not utilized for the purpose.
He said the Eco Restoration Foundation single-handedly removed a ship wreck causing obstruction at the Lekki Beach, Lagos, in 2016 as part of its efforts to save the environment.
He also called for protection of the Mangrove Ecosystem as a natural means to preserve, protect and conserve the nation’s coastal lines and the environment.
“The laws need to be amended. The Oil Spill Detection Response Agencies need to be empowered to be able to enforce investigations and fund it themselves.
“In other cases, we have absence of laws. We have various laws that do not create the necessary environmental remediation or restoration processes.
The laws need to be amended, fines need to be punitive, hefty and they need to deter operators from destroying the environment,” he said.
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