The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has said that over 2,000 Nigerians are going to benefit under the September round of its National Seafarer Development Program (NSDP)
The Director General of NIMASA, Mr. Patrick Akpobolokemi who gave these figures last week in Lagos explained that by September 2012 the cadets will start travelling to different parts of the world to acquire training in different maritime courses.
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has said that over 2,000 Nigerians are going to benefit under the September round of its National Seafarer Development Program (NSDP)
The Director General of NIMASA, Mr. Patrick Akpobolokemi who gave these figures last week in Lagos explained that by September 2012 the cadets will start travelling to different parts of the world to acquire training in different maritime courses.
The NIMASA boss also hinted that the new maritime university that has been approved by the government will be commencing operations any moment from now. Even though he refused to give the name and location of the university, he explained that preliminary works on the university is going on and that NIMASA is trying to fast-track the entire process in order to close up the learning gap in the maritime industry.
“We have four institutes that we have established in existing Nigerian universities to study courses relating to the maritime environment and we are fully sponsoring this to close the knowledge gap”.
“While doing this we are not stopping, this year we are going to send about 2,000 Nigerians, by September they will start going to different parts of the world to learn courses such as marine engineering and so on”.
“We know it is costing us so much, but we cannot wait, let us be doing that until when our academies are fully on ground then we will stop sending people outside the country in order to reserve foreign exchange”.
According to the DG, the only academy Nigeria has (Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron) is low in terms of sea time for cadets because many Nigerians are not involved in ocean going activities.
He however opened up that under the NSDP scheme; NIMASA spends more than the 60 percent it is expected to spend in collaboration with the state governments.
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