A member of the governing council of the Nigerian Institute of Shipping (NIS); Mr. Francis Omotosho has called on the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to incorporate maritime stakeholders into their training plans and budget implementation for 2017.
Omotosho told Shipping Position Daily that the 3% freight being collected by NIMASA and the 7% port surcharge collected by the NPA are meant for the training and retraining of maritime industry practitioners and not only for the staff of the government agencies.
He lamented that most government agencies in the sector have jettisoned training of maritime practitioners, although they include it in their budget, but they only collect the money and train only their own people internally.
Omotosho who is also a maritime trainer and a member of Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) called for the establishment of a maritime fund from where those interested in maritime training can access fund.
He advocated that privately owned maritime academies should be encouraged and assisted through giving of subventions to cover part of the cost of running the academy.
He noted that many of the private academies in the maritime sector are going moribund because there is no student to come and pay and get trained.
"When you talk of maritime education and training, the whole thing bores down to money, you cannot talk about training without money, organisations have put in their training calendars in the budget and government would definitely give them the money for the training"
"The problem is that these government parastatals, haven gotten the budget and the money they only train themselves internally, the main practitioners working the money are neglected ; right from the 3% freight they collect in NIMASA, 7% surcharge from NPA, all these monies are meant to train practitioners, not only for the staff of the organisations, so they need to look at stakeholders who are active in the industry and train them"
"The other side is the private sector, it is good for private individuals to set up maritime training institutions but where are the people to pay?”
"Government should set up a maritime fund where those interested in maritime training can access. There must also be little subvention for the private institutions, maybe if the school fees is around N100,000, you can give them N40,000 per student for 50 students", he said.
Omotosho lamented that many people who have attained the greatest height in Nigeria's maritime industry never dreamt of encouraging their children to study maritime because there is no blueprint for the sector.
He said "there are scholarship programmes for all other fields of study, but there is no scholarship for maritime studies, yet 70 per cent of the funds in this country today is generated through maritime".
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