The Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, CON has met with the new Ambassador of the United Arab Emirate (UAE) to Nigeria, H.E Salem Saeed Al Shamsi who paid the minister a courtesy visit at work.
The visitor highlighted a number of issues for discussion with his host, all aimed at enhancing further mutual, diplomatic, and economic relationships between Abuja and Abu Dhabi.
Among issues discussed and possible for remedy, were the issues around the memorandum of understanding (MOU) previously entered into, by Administrators of the Port of Lagos with the Sovereign Administration of UAE, which Oyetola instantly expressed as a wrong step.
He said, “ it is a wrong step for a Port to hold talk with a sovereign nation. It is wrong for a Port of Nigeria to enter into agreement with a sovereign country; it should be Port to Port.”
He added, however, that the MOU is meant to indicate intention to enter into an agreement which was not an agreement in itself, Hence, needs remedy.
Further, the Marine and Blue Economy Minister, while expressing his delight at having the new envoy visited him early in his tenure in Nigeria, added that there are several areas of possible cooperation to be explored by Nigeria and UAE in their relationships especially regarding the marine and blue economy sector:
“We look forward to what UAE can offer Nigeria in her quest to rehabilitate and rejuvenate its aged port facilities and infrastructure.”
“Our ports have been put in place, many years back and now, they are with aged infrastructure. We look forward to having assistance in building and modernizing infrastructure in many more of our ports, starting with the Deep-Sea Port in Lekki, Lagos, the Ondo Port, and the Burutu Port."
“We also seek to embrace modern technology in the fishery sector. We have a lot of illegal, unreported fishing (IUF) in our marine sector. We have these investment plans that we can share with UAE because we have a plan to have the blue economy replace our declining oil and gas economy. We know that our exposure to, and emulation of the kind of technology which your country uses to drive its ports can help us to stimulate our ease of doing business in our ports, and this can improve the turnaround time for shipping.”
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