A maritime lawyer, Mrs Jean Chiazor-Anishere, on Thursday called for the training of maritime lawyers in maritime security and safety to address cases of sea piracy and armed robbery.
Chiazor-Anishere, a former President of the Women’s International Shipping and Trading Association (WISTA, Nigeria), made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
“I think we have quite a number of lawyers, I think it has to do with training. We have to have our colleagues in the maritime industry to be trained in maritime security and maritime safety.
“Such things we could get locally but at best internationally. I know about Anatomy of Shipping at the Cambridge. They have quite a variety of subjects.
“Issues like security and safety.
“That is the way we can do that; ensuring that the maritime lawyers that we have, also take special courses or training with regards to safety and security.’’
Chiazor-Anishere, said maritime lawyers had been assisting shippers (importers and exporters) in resolving a lot of short delivery issues with the support of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC).
“Now what we have predominantly out of short delivery. For example, a vessel is contracted to bring some cargo down to Nigeria to one of our seaports.
“On arrival at the port, the fact that may be 200, 000 bags of rice that was meant to be discharges at the seaport here in Apapa, they discharged 120 bags of rice.
“So what happen to the remaining bags of rice. So these issues of short delivery are so rampant.
“The Nigerian Shippers Council, their Cargo Defense Unit. They are doing a wonderful job at that. They registered many of us, maritime lawyers with them.
“When they have issues like that of cargo owners or shippers who had registered with cargo defense fund, they contract one of us who is registered with them.
“To look into that issue and we start by writing to the various clients and when the issue settled amicably; then we withdraw the matter from court, that is ongoing now.
“Unfortunately, is only one (case) that we have been able to settle out of court against one of the shippers under the auspices of the Cargo Defense Fund.
“I have been privileged to handle about 11 of such matters. Seven of which we won.
“One is on Appeal, we still have one in court and the other one we settled amicably out of court.’’ (NAN)