Prevalent Safety Hazards and Safety Practices in Maritime Transportation in Selected States in Southern Nigeria

This study seeks to determine existing safety hazards and practices in the inland water transportation sector in selected states of southern Nigeria. A cross-sectional research design was adopted for the study and the target population for the study included the operators, commuters and regulators of inland water transportation in the study areas. Data were collected through questionnaires, field observations and oral interviews. A total of 2375 ques-tionnaires were distributed across the six states. The study showed that a wide range of maritime safety hazards and practices bedeviled the inland water transportation sector in Nigeria. The findings of the study showed that the use of incompetent boat operators was the most prevailing maritime hazard in the study area, because it ranked highest, with 72.6% of respondents in agreement, while non-compliance to alcohol and drug policies by operators, no use of journey management forms and safety briefs rarely conducted before departure were the highest ranked unsafe practices with 70.8%, 72.7% and 72% respondents in agreement respectively. The study recommended that relevant authorities, such as Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and Nigerian Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) should provide competent and trained boat operators, construct standard jetties, ensure standard and routinely maintained boats are used and ensure maritime safety standards and regulations are adhered to by boat operators and maritime workers to prevent incidents and breakdown of boats along waterways in the study area.


Introduction
Transportation is one of the most important catalysts for socio-economic development of any place (Akali and Idoko 2010) [1]. The developments in transportation and improvements in the various modes of same have an impact on not only economic and socio-cultural activities; but also play a major role in spatial organization and ordering globally. Inland Waterways Transport (IWT) is the movement of people and goods along inland waterways (Fellinda, 2006;Obeta, 2014) [2] [3].
Nigeria being a coastal nation is endowed with a large stretch of inland navigable waters stretching over 10,000 km. The navigable inland water comprises of rivers, lakes, lagoons, creeks and intra-coastal waters (Aderemo and Mogaji, 2010) [4]. Inland water transportation provides a cost-effective, logistically efficient and environment-friendly mode of transport whose development as a supplementary mode would enable diversion of traffic from over-congested roads and railways, contribute to economic and social development (Ojile, 2006;Obeta 2014) [3] [5].
Despite potentials in the nation's inland waterways, the sector in Nigeria has had a long history of neglect by both the government and the private sector Tosin, 2014) [6]- [11]. Little efforts have been made to develop inland water transport facilities. This stems largely from policy inconsistency, limited private sector involvement, and conflicts by agencies involved in the management of inland water transport in Nigeria (Abam, 2004) [12]. The sector has been regarded as one of the most dangerous in Nigeria owing to the problems enumerated below; Sea piracy is presently very common, hence leading to loss of life and properties causing huge economic and commercial losses to Communities, Local government areas, States and Nigeria as a nation (Obeta, 2014) [3].
Nevertheless, whereas sea piracy and other insecurities associated with inland water transport appear to be on the decrease globally, it is increasing in Nigeria. This situation has been worsened by neglect by successive governments in Nigeria to approach insecurity problems head-on (Akogun, 2014;Oyadongha, 2014) [7] [10].
Ademiluyi, Afolabi & Fashola (2016) [13] in their study "Analysis of intra-city water transportation in Lagos state" which was necessitated by the regular traffic congestion usually experienced in Lagos state metropolis daily. Primary and secondary data are used with descriptive statistics such as percentages to present analyzed results. Spearman's correlation was used to analyze the relationships between different factors, like frequency of using the water ways for transportation, educational level and income category of the respondents. The findings from the study showed that more than 58% of the sampled population acknowledged that they use the water transportation daily. While more than half of the respondents (52%) opined that the state of the water transportation system was very bad. The study revealed the following; poor jetty and ferries construction, The question on the lips of many transport industry operators is "when will the inland waterways system be developed in Nigeria". Across the country, the potentials of this sub-sector have remained untapped. This study therefore seeks to evaluate the prevalent safety hazards and the safety practices in the inland water transportation sector in the study area. The researcher was inspired to undertake this study on the need to unravel the cause of the underdevelopment and underutilization of the inland water ways in Nigeria despite been endowed with a long stretch of navigable waters. In other to carry out this study, research questions were formulated to address the stated problems.

Study Area
The study was limited to selected coastal states in Nigeria, namely; Anambra, Bayelsa, Cross River, Lagos, Ondo and Rivers States. A reason for selecting these states borders on the fact that this research looked at the country's maritime transport sector's safety hazards and practices. These selected states rely primarily on marine transportation to complement other available transportation means. Nigeria is a coastline nation with a coastline of 853 km and a land mass of about 923,768 sq.km. Its coastline lies on the Gulf of Guinea in the southern part and it is bordered by Lake Chad in the north-eastern part, while on the western part it is bordered by Republic of Benin and Niger Republic on the North. Nigeria is situated geographically between longitude 3˚E and 15˚E, and latitude 4˚N and 14˚N (Efe, 2010) [14].
The coastal, area lies on a low plain of not more than 300 cm above the mean sea level and it is predominantly covered with swamps (mangrove and fresh water) lagoon mashes, sand dunes, beach ridges and tidal channels. This zone experiences a climatic condition predominated by tropical climate, consisting of rainy season from April to November and dry season from December to March (Efe, 2010) ( Figure 1).

Research Design
The research design adopted in the study was the cross-sectional research design. The cross-sectional research design was used because it allows the investigator to measure the outcome and the exposures in the study participants at the same time. To achieve this, the researcher employed a structured instrument which was administered to regulators, operators and commuters of the inland waterways to assess their perception, knowledge and awareness of the risk inherent in maritime transportation and incident records.

Target Population
The target population for the study included the operators, commuters and regulators of inland water transportation in the study areas. The justification for targeting this population is that the researcher felt that these populations are those who frequently use the inland water ways ( where n = the sample size; N = the total population size; e = sampling error (in this case 0.05); 1 = constant.

Sampling Technique
Copies of questionnaire were administered using the systematic random sampling technique. However, for effective administration of the copies of questionnaire, the researcher employed the services of some field research assistants Open Journal of Safety Science and Technology for the purpose of distribution.

Validity and Reliability of Instrument
The research instrument was subjected to face and content validation. This was necessitated by the need for the items on the instrument to appear valid and logically linked to the study objectives, while also covering the full range of the issues concerning maritime transportation Safety management.

Demographic Distribution
The demographic distribution of respondents, Table 1 showed that 64%, which was 1518 of respondents were male and 36%, which was 857 were female adding up to 2375 were the respondents the instruments were administered to, out of which 2352 were returned. A breakdown of the returned instruments were as follows; 5%, which was 123 respondents were less or equal to 25 years of age, 35%, totaling 839 respondents were between 26 and 35 years of age, 45%, which was 1069 respondents were between 36 and 45 years of age and 15%, which was 344 respondents were 46 and above years of age.

Prevalent Safety Hazards in Maritime Transportation
Presented in Table 2 was the perception of the respondents on prevailing hazards in the maritime transportation sector in the study area. The result showed that the use of incompetent boat operators was the most prevailing maritime hazard in the study area, because it ranked highest (1), with 72.6% of respondents agreeing, 19.6% disagreeing and 7.8% were undecided, closely followed was poorly constructed jetties which ranked second (2) as 73% of the respondents were in agreement and non-provision of lighting gadgets on boats also ranked second (2) with 72.1% of respondents in agreement. This was followed by inadequate navigational route signs with 70.8% in agreement on the fourth (4) position, water hyacinth presence with 69.6% of respondents in agreement ranked fifth (5) and boats/vessels wrecked and abandoned on the waterway with 72.9% in agreement ranked sixth (6). Table 3

Discussion
This study showed that the inland water transportation sector in Nigeria is been bedeviled by a wide range of maritime safety hazards including; use of incompe- Ezenwaji, (2010) [19]; and Obed, 2013 [20]; who found in their various studies  [20] indicated that poor lighting systems can lead to severe risks, especially during bad weather, early evenings or rainfall. This leads to accidents, especially when compounded by inadequate signs along major navigational routes.

Conclusions
In the developed nations, inland water transport is treated with serious attention, knowing the economic and developmental effects of its collapse. However, there is a sharp contrast in the developing nations in general and Nigeria in particular. One of the issues that have militated against inland water transport in Nigeria is inadequate regulations and policing. This has resulted in increased safety and security risk, poor maritime infrastructural development, non-compliance to international maritime safety codes and procedures, poor safety practices, etc.
Therefore, this study recommends the following:

Contributions
The study revealed that the level of operators' safety awareness, practices and conditions of jetties affect marine safety.