The director of the African Maritime Academy (AMA) has taken a swipe at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) over its National Seafarers Development program (NSDP), saying that the programme was not well thought out and that this is not what is obtainable in other countries of the world.
The director of the African Maritime Academy (AMA) has taken a swipe at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) over its National Seafarers Development program (NSDP), saying that the programme was not well thought out and that this is not what is obtainable in other countries of the world.
The Director of the academy, Engineer Yusuf Mohammed who was addressing maritime journalists in Lagos recently said that the money that NIMASA is using to select their cadets from political loyalist should be channeled into creating an enabling environment for the existing maritime academies in Nigeria so as to bring them up to date with others around the world.
According to him, many of the cadets that are sponsored by the states and those that came from affluent homes usually turn out to be the dullards while those from a humble background are the ones that make top grades.
Speaking further, he said, “the money that the government is giving to NIMASA to select these boys from political loyalist is not the way it’s done all over the world, government should have no hand in this type of business, but they should create an enabling environment”.
“By the time you gathered 500 Nigerians, those of them that will be very brilliant are from the less privilege homes, the one that belong to the ministers or the governors is either a drunkard or he doesn’t understand what you are teaching him or her, therefore those that have people behind them could not excel and this is our major constraint” he lamented.
Engineer Yusuf also bragged that there is no where NIMASA has taken their boys on the NSDP to all over the world that they have not found cadets from the African Maritime Academy already in the university.
He however alleged that NIMASA is envious of his academy and is out on a campaign to give the institution a bad name in Nigeria.
According to him, “NIMASA sends its student to AMET university for one year and this is the same thing we are doing for our student, you cannot then come back and embark on a campaign against an organization in your country that gives the same opportunity, it’s unfair, if you do this and think you are doing something good, posterity will not forgive you” he said.
Engineer Yusuf also explained that AMA which started about 14 years ago has within the last three years succeeded in sending a good number of cadets abroad for various levels of maritime trainings. “We have been able to send our students to 11 universities around the world out of 47 that offers merchant training”, he stated.
“We currently have more than 11,000 cadets working across the globe since the inception of this academy, and we cannot move any one of them out without passing through the federal ministry of foreign affairs, the records are there, we are not training hoodlums”.
“We have affiliation with many international universities including Cyprus international university, AMET and so on”
“We are adding value to teaching and learning by applying technology in the knowledge impacting process, since 2010 we have commenced teaching with the use of projectors and increased our training facilities n line with the demand of modern day education”
“African maritime academy belongs to five international bodies; our cadets are now more ICT- inclined as we recently procured 2000 units of computers in addition to the existing ones in order to boost their knowledge of information technology which is required in modern day vessel operation.” He said
Eng Yusuf also said that the academy have expanded its classrooms and office facilities to accommodate more cadets and staff.
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