In this interview with our Correspondent; Roland Ekama, the President of the Centre for Marine Surveyors in Nigeria; Prince Ademiluyi Adebambo talks about providing qualitative training for future Surveyors. He says attention has shifted to Institutions to ‘catch-them-young’. He is also bewildered by the dwindling fortunes of inland water transportation system in Nigeria, as well as other maritime-centred issues
“If the government activates the economy properly, the maritime industry will jerk back”
The Centre for Marine Surveyors has been quiet after the first AGM held last year. What have you been doing since the beginning of this year?
We are meeting to consolidate our positions and programmes, that is what we plan to do this year and that really didn't need any publicity. It is more or less an in-house thing where we get our members together, have meetings on strategic plans and also do one or two trainings. So, that is what we have been concentrating on, but one of the biggest gains we have had in the year is the fact that we are able to start our students’ membership programme. Presently, we have invited on board, the Rector of the Institute of Oceanography and Marine Technology. The Rector is now on the Council and we have almost 100 students who have filled forms to join the centre. In the University of Lagos (UNILAG), we had a career talk with them which was very successful and very well-attended, the students were quite excited to know that there is an organisation that is willing to mentor them, because what we offered was training and mentoring. We may not be able to take everybody but those that we can; we will mentor them to a point where they can be full members of the Centre for Marine Surveyors in Nigeria. So, we did that in University of Lagos; department of Marine, Biology and Sciences. We want to do the same in the Faculty of Technology of the same UNILAG because if you are getting Marine Sciences people, you need Engineers on board too and we also intend to do same in Bells University. So, basically, that has been our activities in the last three months, apart from the fact that we are planning our Annual General Meeting again for November. This year, in our Annual General Meeting, we want to focus on safe navigation of small boats in the Inland Waterway.
Why the choice of that topic?
There have been accidents and we felt we needed to focus on why those accidents happen, how they can be prevented and most importantly, what needs to be done to increase the use of small boats on our inland waterways in a safe manner. So, we are inviting top people from Lagos state, we will also seek to invite people from the federal, because we want to seek the interface in policy issues that are stalling the development of the sector.
You talked about training for students. What form is it going to take? Is it going to be foreign or local training?
Our training will be local, we will organise trainings by ourselves for ourselves and for the students, we will organise training and excursions for them because no matter what you teach, you need to show them what you teach. We intend to arrange for them to sail and be on vessels and have a feel of the marine world. But for other members, we intend to have one that will cut across all surveyors possibly in the area of code of practice.
In the training for students you just talked about, do you intend to involve private maritime academy students?
We have not reached out to them, but we could but we will check if they are relevant to our vision, and our focus, but the only one we have been contemplating of engaging is the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron which is government-owned. Sometimes these private maritime schools have their focus and when we start to intervene, they may not welcome it. We will investigate and see if there are ways we can collaborate with them so that their students can benefit from the training. Our own goal is mainly to ensure that the next set of marine surveyors that are produced in Nigeria will be far more professional than the present generation and be better certified. For instance, we are now looking at having certification programmes with international bodies. We will invite international certifying bodies to have programmes that will be certifying our surveyors.
Do the students have to pay for the training as a means of commitment?
Yes, students will join with N10,000, half of that is for registration and half of that for the year is for the excursion and the materials, but subsequently, they will pay only N5000 in a year and they will still be entitled to their excursion.
What is the duration of the training?
It is a year and it N5000 per annum, that's what they need to pay after the initial N10,000 as student- members, but when they become graduates and they still wish to be members, then they will pay N12,000 per annum.
What is the numerical strength of membership of the centre?
Corporate members now will be about 18 or 19, individual members are 20 and students are many because they are institutions. We don't have many people as our corporate members because we are being careful about people joining. We don't want any distortion or unnecessary politics. We want to consolidate our programmes and we want to ensure thorough professionalism and you must agree with me that in marine surveying, there are more quacks than professionals.
In all of these efforts, how well have you engaged the government in terms of collaboration, assistance or in any way possible to see that more people benefit from this laudable scheme?
We have written to all of them; NIMASA, Shippers' Council and NPA. They have actually accepted to come on board our council, all we are waiting for is a formal meeting and of course when that happens, they will attend our council meetings and our problems will be shared with them and they will solve the ones they can solve. That is the strategy we intend to use to bring them in as members of Council. For instance, the Rectors of the institutions attended the last council meeting. So, we are trying to bring in the federal establishments, if we can get about six to eight of them. For instance, the Rector of Oron automatically qualifies come on board the council, the Federal Inland Waterways Authority helmsman can also come into our council. We have written letters to a few of them and we have interacted with them and they have accepted, but sometimes bureaucracy of government does not allow them to make quick formal responses, but in terms of decision, most of them have accepted to come on board.
Our inland waterways are not fully utilised, what do you think the government can do to maximise the use of the inland waterways?
That is what we want to ask them during our AGM in November. We want to ask why there are not activities in the inland waterways, why it is stagnant, why it is not growing. That is why we want to focus on inland waterways, safe cruise of small boats which includes tug boats and also why we have not been moving goods from Apapa to Ikorodu with tug boats. There used to be cruise boats that I have entered twice, we even had a party on it in the 1990s. The boat was owned by Lagos state; why aren't such boats available? People used to have weddings on boats; what's happening. The people in Apapa boat club and other boat clubs are the ones enjoying good boat rides. And why are investors not coming. Those are the questions we want to ask them and what government can do to help all these situations. That is our focus area for our next AGM.
What do you suggest the government should do to make the maritime industry rosy again?
The maritime industry depends on other industries, raw materials coming in, exports going out and products moving from one point to the other. If the government activates the economy properly, the maritime industry will jerk back. So, you cannot really say government should activate the maritime alone; it is the other activities in other sectors that require maritime services that should ginger it. The activities in the oil sector will be beneficial to the maritime industry because the ship brings in products. There are activities that are geared towards activating other sectors. The activities of some of these people in the tank farms have dropped by 50%, so there is less to do. Actually, it is the level of activities in all these sectors that determine the activity in the maritime industry. If the government reflates the economy, if there is export, one vessel will carry it, a lab will test it, a surveyor will count it and everybody will carry out his/her activity on it and people will eat.
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