A former Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Mr Raymond Temisan Omatseye has revealed the tactics and strategies he adopted to get Nigeria elected into the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Category C seat in 2009.
Speaking with the Nigerian Tribune exclusively, the former NIMASA DG stated that, “We first won the election in 2007 when Ade Dosunmu was DG. I took over at NIMASA from Ade Dosunmu in July of 2009, and by November of that year, we won the election into IMO Council seat again. We did this by coming 5th, therefore improving on our 17th position of 2007.
“How did we achieve this? It is important that our current leaders at the Federal Ministry of Transport and NIMASA understand international diplomacy. International diplomacy has to do with giving and taking. What I mean by giving and taking is that you have to put something on the table to get what you want. There are few countries that have a lot of say at the IMO. I am talking about the Greeks, Americans, British, Australians, Canadians, Koreans and others; who, when they talk, the IMO lines up behind them.
“After identifying these countries, we need to know what is key to all of them, which is international commerce. These countries don’t like a system that isolates their vessels when they visit your ports. So, it’s important that we let these countries know that while we won’t be antagonistic to their vessels, we won’t also allow their vessels to dominate our shipping businesses since we also want local participation in shipping.
“Aside from this, the game-changer back in 2009 was our position on COP-15 which was about regulating vessels fuel emission as regards the global climate change campaign. As the DG of NIMASA then, we went ahead to support a paper that will make the United Nations arm on climate change, I think UNOC at that time, to charge a tax on fuel. We went to somewhere in Germany and supported the call that a tax should be charged on fuel to regulate emission.
“This went against the position of the IMO. When IMO heard what we were doing, they called and said we are creating confusion in the whole system. I told them that our position is good for Africa, but the IMO disagreed and asked us to stop our campaign.
“I remember vividly, William Azu was the one that called me from the IMO. He said they have been inundated with calls that Nigeria is supporting a project that the organization is against. I told Azu that there is no problem, we can discontinue our campaign only on one condition; that I want an IMO Council seat for Nigeria. He said ok, we will talk about it.
“After that day, I withdrew our campaign on climate change and fuel emission, and we went into IMO Council election as a country that narrowly won two years ago by finishing 17 out of 18 countries. After the election, we came 5th out of 18 countries.
“International diplomacy is giving and taking. At that time, I was able to use COP-15 to get the IMO seat for Nigeria. Today, there are issues at the IMO, and that is why we have a Permanent Representative there. We should be asking our Permanent Representative what are the core issues at the IMO? What are these countries discussing now at the IMO? How can Nigeria plug in into these discussions to get what it wants? Those days when we say Nigeria is the biggest in Africa and she gets what she wants are gone.”
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