NIMASA seal off Sifax Group head office in Commando style

Officials of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA yesterday stormed the head office of SIfax Group in Commando style, sealing off the premises for about an hour for non-payment of outstanding dues.

Entrance gate of Sifax Group: Customers and visitors were prevented
from entering for about one hour

The officers numbering about eight (both military and civilians), came in a Helux bus with registration number 19J–19FG prevented both customers and visitor from gaining entrance into the premises. Efforts to speak with one of the officials were rebuffed as he told our reporter that he cannot speak with anyone until they were through with their operation.

Harboursandport gathered that some officials from NIMASA had earlier called at Sifax office but were denied access before they went back to re-enforce and stormed the Sifax head office.

When contacted, Manager Corporate Affairs of Sifax Group, Muyiwa Akande, told Harboursandport that the NIMASA officials came regarding non-payment of some dues of which they claimed to have written to Sifax about earlier.

Akande explained that they never got any letter from NIMASA on the issue and that the acknowledgement letter presented by the NIMASA team had the name of someone who is not in their employment.

He said there was no way they would have gotten a letter from NIMASA without responding.

According to him, “They said they sent a letter to us on some outstanding payment and the letter never got to us. They said that someone acknowledged it and we do not have such name on our staff roll. There is no way we would have responded to a letter we never received, they discussed with our management and came to a conclusion, they brought the letter and we formerly acknowledged it and both parties have agreed to work together to make sure issues are resolved.

“Our office was never sealed but normally when you have a taskforce that goes with security men, you cannot write off over zealousness of one or two of them,” he noted.

When contacted, Head of Public Affairs Department of NIMASA, Osamgbi Isichei, said he does not have details of what transpired but promised to speak with the enforcement unit and get back to Harboursandport.

Isichei however did not respond as at the time of going to press.