The Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers Council, Captain Adamu Biu has clarified that the functions of the Council in the Nigerian maritime industry is strictly that of education and capacity building.
Capt. Biu who was addressing members of the Senate Committee on Marine Transport who visited the agency on a working visit last week differentiated the Shippers’ Council from sister agencies like the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA).
The Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers Council, Captain Adamu Biu has clarified that the functions of the Council in the Nigerian maritime industry is strictly that of education and capacity building.
Capt. Biu who was addressing members of the Senate Committee on Marine Transport who visited the agency on a working visit last week differentiated the Shippers’ Council from sister agencies like the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA).
He told the law makers that, “our function as Shippers’ Council is purely an academic function, we don’t do any other thing than to train and retrain members of our staff to keep in pace with international development”.
“We are not like ports authority that is expanding ports and things like that, we are not like NIMASA that is saddled with physical things, ours is that we are there whenever there is international conference that is affecting the port, affecting the safety of cargo, international conventions, 100 percent” he said
The Shippers’ Council boss explained that the council is currently subscribed to over 20 different international bodies, even as he lamented that most of the people in the shipping business in Nigeria are not shipping-inclined.
“In the council itself, we have to train and retrain; you will not find any graduate in Nigeria coming up with a Certificate in Shipping, they come with history, biology etc and yet you need them”.
“Therefore, the industry is dynamic, we need to train and retrain, things are changing, conventions are changing by the day, and every time we need to train, we send people from appropriate departments to go and attend courses, while we send some of them for long term courses, masters degrees while some of them for short term courses like two to three weeks types of courses and the likes”, he told the lawmakers.
He explained that the council presently has offices in 26 states, and that in each state, it gets shippers in the area together and enlighten them about happenings in the industry.
“So many people, especially in the northern part that do not know where to source goods that they want to trade in, we take the pains to try if we can talk to them, we form shippers association for them all over the place, there is no time one or two of our directors are not on the road” Biu said.
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