By Adedapo Adesanya
The organisers of the Nigeria Blue Economy Stakeholders Conference scheduled to hold between June 22 and 24, 2021, have postponed the event.
The postponement, which occurred after strategic engagements with key stakeholders in the last 24 hours, is to allow for additional time for preparation by all stakeholders for a robust and successful conference.
The objectives of the conference, one of the earliest steps for establishing a sustainable Nigerian Blue Economy, remain to create a platform to bring all stakeholders together for the primary objective of agreeing on the framework for creating a sustainable Nigerian Blue Economy;
It also seeks to establish a policy framework that will assist the federal government of Nigeria and other stakeholders to understand their roles in the process of building a Nigerian Blue Economy.
In addition, it will assist in drawing up a communique from the conference that will underpin the necessity for the Blue Economy that will serve as the policy instrument for Nigeria.
Also, it will constitute an independent Virtual Secretariat made up of TEN representatives of critical stakeholders that will manage the transitioning of the communique to policy and eventual implementation.
The organisers in a statement signed by Mr Soji Adeleye, Chief Executive Officer, Alfe City Institution noted, “We express our very sincere apologies for the inconvenience this might cause those stakeholders that have completed their own preparations in the last many months.”
It explained that a new date will be announced very shortly, adding that it hoped all concerned would use this extra window to further enhance their Blue Economy profile.
The Blue Economy in recent time has been pegged as an assured antidote to a struggling Nigerian economy. It has been professed by experts as an important missing component of the Nigerian economy.
However, COVID-19 and the total collapse of the energy trade finally laid bare the abject inadequacy of the current monocentric Nigerian economy to support the basic need of ordinary people.
Organisers believe that incorporating a blue economy would spur dramatic infrastructural development around coastal towns and cities; transform port cities, holiday resorts, beaches along the Atlantic coast; and would create employment across all segments of the ecosystem from fishing, transportation, to shipbuilding.