Blue Economy: ‘Nigeria Stands to Benefit from Deep Seabed Exploration’

Kuni Tyessi in Abuja

International Seabed Authority (ISA) has expressed hope that Nigeria will benefit from deep exploration from Africa’s seabed, saying there is going to be a particular benefit for Nigeria.

Its Secretary-General, Mr. Michael Lodge, said this while speaking with journalists at the sidelines of the events at the 4th edition of the Africa’s Deep Seabed Resources, ADSR, Sub-Regional workshop on the Imperative of Supporting Africa’s Blue Economy, held in Abuja.

The event was organised by the ISA in collaboration with the National Boundary Commission (NBC), the Federal Ministry of Transport, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), the Nigerian Navy, and other MDAs.

He said: “I think there is going to be a particular benefit for Nigeria, but the idea of the project as a whole is that we will go to different locations in Africa.”

According to him, “This project is aimed at the whole of Africa, and of course Nigeria, because they have expressed a very strong interest.

“We had three days of amazing technical content talking about deep sea exploration, deep sea resource potential in terms of mineral resource potential, marine environment protection and technology, as well as capacity development for the benefit of African states.

“We had a series of roundtables involving all the participants both from Nigeria, as well as eight neighbouring African countries, who have come up themselves with a set of recommendations and proposals as to how Africa can engage more in deep-sea scientific research.

“The deep seabed technology development, capacity building, and eventually resource exploitation event, I  think, has been a very productive three days for us. I’m very positive about the future engagement of Africa in the deep sea.

“So far, we have been to Pretoria, South Africa, Mauritius, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, and now Nigeria. So we are collecting views and inputs from all different regions on the continent.

“For the final workshop in this particular programme will convene to review the recommendations from each regional workshop and put together a whole series of package of recommendations and proposals for African states that will be able to take up at the political level at the African Union and within the International Seabed Authority.’’

On his own, the Nigerian Ambassador to Jamaica, and Permanent Representative on the ISA, Dr. Maureen Tamuno, said there’s a lot for Nigeria to benefit from the International Seabed.

He said: “We used this workshop to create awareness and also to engineer the participation of Nigerians, especially collaboration between the private sector and government, so that they will be able to get into the exploration stage, which is what other countries are doing.”