Abuja MoU ’ll Improve Public Sector Capacity to Tackle Corruption at Seaports – Ebrima Sillah
The Chairman of Abuja Memorandum of Understanding for West and Central African Region and Minister of Transport, Works and Infrastructure of the Gambia, Ebrima Sillah, has told stakeholders and participants that the Abuja MoU will improve public sector capacity to tackle corruption at seaports, that the need for ethical practice and integrity cannot be over emphasised.
He emphasised the need for elimination of unethical practices in port operations and entrench integrity and forthrightness for efficiency and confidence in the sector.
Ebrima made the call at the maiden Ethics and integrity leadership training for port state control officers in Ikoyi, Lagos on Monday.
He maintained that despite efforts to rid the sector of corruption, there are still givers and takers of bribes saying there is need for officers to conduct themselves ethically.
This mismatch breeds corruption and disregard for the ethics and even inspectors of the maritime administrations.
Furthermore he said, “Some of them are unethical, disobey rules to continue their unbecoming activities by condescending our environment and economy and even the lives of people.
“For collaboration and cooperation, we are critical to achieve our own aim, transparency and credibility in our own state control efforts to ensure that officers conduct themselves ethically with intergrity.
He added that “There is need for officers to conduct themselves ethically. There is need to call for ethical practice in the ecosystem
“There is need to bring in the well desired change for port control officers. Let us strive to fight corruption in the sector
“Shipping is an important up taker of our continent hence the need for ethical practice and integrity cannot be over emphasized.”
Earlier, the Vice Chairman, AMoU, Gboyega Oyetola, who is also the Nigeria’s Minister of Marine and Blue Economy called on the port state officers to understand the importance of ethics
According to Oyetola, ethical practice would allow for accountable maritime.sector.
He therefore called for collective efforts among all players to entrench the needed integrity in the industry.
His words, “We must know the importance of ethics as port control officers. It will allow for accountable Maritime sector
“Together, let us pave the way for Maritime.integtiyy,” he admonished.
Also speaking, the representative of the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN), Vivek Menon stated that the efforts of the network has yielded significant results in both the ship and cargo examination sides.
He also .emphasised that Integrity, professionalism, transparency among other virtues are the core values of.AMoU.
Mr Menon charged the officers on the need to put into practice the ethical values and the principles
“How do we ensure that people work with the integrity and all the principles
“It.is not just a training, we want to engage in ethics and be able to collaborate in building capacity.”
The Ambassador of Denmark to Nigeria, Sune Krogstrup, represented by Jette Bdellum who expressed happiness about the training, added that the training was germane because of the socio economic growth abd development of the sector..
She said, “Improving the maritime sector is important to Danish government. We have a.long history, we he one of the largest merchant vessels in the world. We are number 5 in the world in terms of fleet. Without leadership, nothing happens.”
