NIMASA Opens Online Portal to Fight Forgery among Seafarers

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is not leaving any stone unturned on the fight against fake seafarers, as the Agency recently launched an online portal for verification of seafarers’ Certificates of Competency, (CoC), for Nigerian Seafarers.

The agency said the idea was to checkmate the increasing forage of certificate forgers.

“We have been faced with cases of people going on board to present a certificate not issued by us but now if you go on board you present a certificate and they take the number on the certificate to the portal and click it; the result will come out to show the authenticity or otherwise of the certificate instead of physically doing it, it is done online to make it easier”, indicated Engr. Vincent Udoye, an executive director of the Marine Safety and Seafarers Standards Department.

He noted that Nigeria was among the privileged few countries that have achieved the feat of launching portals for the verification of seafarers CoC.

“if you check the International Maritime Organization, (IMO), website Nigeria is among the privileged few to have achieved this feat of online verification”, observed Udoye, stating that the era of writing letters, or waiting for response from the agency to ask about the details of seafarers had run out.

A representative of the consultancy firm that developed the portal, Mr. Segun, gave the web address as www.nimasaseafarers.com

“Certificate number, picture, date of birth limitation date and some other relevant information about the seafarers is gotten.. The portal also has biometric and the certificate that was verify can be printed out if the need arises”, he explained

Highlighting the importance of the portal, NIMASA said that the portal would help capture Seafarers registered by the agency, Biometric personal details, employment history, professional qualification, mandatory, discharge and retirement of registered seafarers.

Also, the portal would help foreign shipping companies ascertain the standards and qualifications of Nigerian Seafarers before putting them on their vessels.

Meanwhile, the agency said it was deploying Search and Rescue (SAR) marshals at jetties, following increasing waves of attacks at the nations territorial waters and jetties.

The marshals would ensure that at every jetty, mandatory checks were carried out on boat operators’ safety measures.

Captain Ezekiel Agaba, executive director, Maritime Safety and Shipping Development (NIMASA), disclosed this, while calling stakeholders in the maritime industry in Lagos to ensure they provide conducive for the marshals to operate.

“What we intend to do is that we are having incidents of vessels capsizing due to overloading. Therefore we need to put some of the marshals in some of the locations to monitor safety precautions by the operators just as we have the road marshal”, he explained further.