A maritime expert, Mrs Violet Williams, on Monday unveiled a book titled: ‘Some Career Opportunities in the Marine and Blue Economy Workplace,’ to ensure pupils to explore the huge job potential in the sector.
Williams unveiled the book during the Ocean Ambassadors Foundation (OAF) fifth Educators and Maritime Stakeholders Lecture and Award and fourth nationwide virtual Maritime Quiz Competition in Lagos.
Williams said she initially had a book that had a compendium, a compilation of lecture series for the past six years, but discovered that an 18-year old girl did not know the colour of water not to talk of careers therein.
“To this extent, what we are trying to do in essence is to make sure that an elementary school boy or girl will fashion out their career in the marine and blue economy in the early stages.
“So, I had to simplify it and try to get the ABC of it so that with the new ministry of marine and blue economy, it will be easier even at the top to understand because the ministry is new,” she said.
Williams, also former board member, the Nigerian Shippers’ Council, noted that most people that got into the maritime industry, as we all heard them today, got in accidentally.
“But we want a sustainable industry so that it will not be an accidental entry, it will be a purposeful entry with sustainability.
“We only have the platform now, the framework, but the impetus to continue is sustainable and must start from the cradle, and that is what informed me,” she said.
On plans to inculcate this into the school framework, Williams noted that in 2022, she wrote to the Ministry of Education and fortunately got a reply from their agency that deal with curriculum and that was where we are now.
“But with the Ministry of Marine and Blue economy, they should take it up because we were advocating for a blue economy industry and now that we have it, they should take it up.
“We have done our beat, they should now invite us to ask where we have stopped, because we have stopped when it comes to curriculum,” she said.
Earlier, while reviewing the book, Mrs Carolyn Ufere, the Independent Maritime Practitioner and former General Manager, Nigerian Ports Authority, described Williams a lone fighter trying to push the industry forward.
Ufere noted that Williams focus on educating the girl-child and getting the best out of them, motivated her into writing the book.
“The book contains several elements that will compel the younger ones into the field, the title is clear and the forward highlights the significance of the ocean as a source of work for mankind.
“The book present the maritime sector as an arena where issues are addressed and she charges the young ones to sell the blue economy to the world, selling its gains,” she said.
Ufere noted that information was power, adding that the book contained tools that would be used to empower the young girl and likewise the boys.
“I recommend the book to every institution, organisation where great minds are natured as it will be a book that will turnaround our nation,” she said.
