Paucity of funds may hinder the progress of work on Nigeria’s application to extend its continental shelf, currently before the UN, investigations revealed.
Nigeria had on May 7, 2009 submitted its request for the extension of the shelf from 200 nautical miles to 350 nautical miles to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.
The funds would be required to pay a team of consultants, who are preparing Nigerian experts for the defence of the application.
The funds would also facilitate other technical work and inputs at the UN, as well as for the day-to-day running of the Extended Continental Shelf (ECS) Office in New York, which is monitoring the exercise.
Sources at the office said that officers working at the commission’s office in the New York have not been paid their Foreign Service Allowances and other entitlements for more than eight months.
According to the source the poor financial situation has made it difficult to assemble a Nigerian team to make amendments to the submission, which is considered necessary, as a result of developments in the maritime industry.
The source said many countries who made similar applications have skipped the bureaucracy attached to budget processing by establishing dedicated bodies to handle their continental shelf extensions.
“Those countries budgets are funded directly from special funds, whereas Nigeria which started its process earlier than any other African countries is now 38th on the queue,’’ the source said.
National Boundary Commission (NBC) is spear-heading the Nigeria Project, which started about 10 years ago.
NBC, it was learnt, began the project with experts drawn from the Ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs, Works, Navy, Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research among others and a team of consultants was chosen from Canada and the UK to assist the Nigerian experts.
Nigerian government decided to seek the extension based on Article 76, paragraph 8, of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which, a Nigerian diplomat said, the government had “fully” satisfied its provisions.
The extension of Nigeria’s continental shelf would enable it to explore and exploit its seabed resources to enhance the country’s economy, and facilitate peace and security in the Gulf of Guinea region.
However, in his reaction Dr Muhammed Ahmad, the Director General of the National Boundary Commission, on Thursday in Abuja said there was no delay in Nigeria’s application to extend its Continental Shelf before the UN.
In an interview, Ahmad said the defence on application would open between now and early 2013 adding that the team was expecting more funds from the Federal Government to get prepared in order not to lose the bid.
“There is no delay. We have submitted our request in accordance with the relevant articles of the UN Commission of the Law of Sea within the UN time limit and it is supposed to go through processes and it is going through the processes right now.
“Now there are few but necessary and important activities we need to ascertain in pursuant to our request and these are what we are unable to do in 2011 because we don’t have the funds to do it,’’ Ahmad said.
He said no budgetary provision was made in 2011 for the project but President Goodluck Jonathan has promised that the situation will be different this year.
Ahmad said that funds would be required to train and retrain the Nigerian Technical teams as well as to pay the consultants who are preparing the Nigerian experts for the defence of the application before UN.