Engineer Bob Yousuo (National President, Nigerian Merchant Navy)
I will say it is very relevant, because there are people who have gone and come back successfully. There is no perfection in any system. This is Nigeria and we are bound to see all these kind of situations. It is very saddening for we to allow this problem occur before we take action. Things are not being done rightly until they get out of hand, before we wake up from slumber. I advise NIMASA and the Ministry of Transportation to make sure they take proactive steps in rightly steering the affairs of the industry in other to avoid future national embarrassment.
Captain Williams Ogunsakin (Master Mariner)
The NSDP is an issue we have been criticising for a long time. In Nigeria, the challenge we have is not even the cadets, but the officers. Many of our officers need money to further their career. We have people that can do the job in Nigeria, but they said we don’t have foreign tickets. I don’t know what NIMASA intends to gain with the issue of NSDP because we have School of Oceanography, MAN Oron, Maritime Academy in Delta and so many other private institutions; about 27 of them which were approved by NIMASA for training cadets. Why are they still trying to send people abroad to waste our resources? They should have as well made the government owned institutions to be well-funded so that we can have the capacity to train people to the maximum. If that is not possible, we can have partnership with foreign institutions so that when we train people here, they go there to take their exams. So you would minimise costs. After learning, we do not have flagged ships to accommodate the cadets for their practical training. The NSDP is not necessary in Nigeria. I don’t know why they are still doing it. That is not what we need.
Engr. Alalade Matthew (Former President, Merchant Navy)
NIMASA has been praising herself all along about this NSDP. So we are surprise to hear the plight of these cadets. I think the Federal Ministry of Transportation should go ahead of NIMASA to investigate the issue. As far as I am concerned, NIMASA is not handling the NSDP the way they should. That is why it is the way it is today. The major problem faced is the seatime. We don’t have vessels to train them. It is still relevant but the way they manage it now is not commendable. The cadets have not been protesting all the while. It is because of the way they are being treated by NIMASA.
Captain Adetayo Saliu (Chairman, Merchant Navy Shipping Zonal Council)
We have to get to the root of the matter before we can actually judge what happened between those cadets and NIMASA. My stand has always been that I don’t see why we need to take Cadets outside Nigeria to train when we have nautical institutions here. All the money we are taking outside can be used to upgrade our institutions here in Nigeria and get them all the instruments and facilities for training. NIMASA should also look into the training of the existing officers to meet up with global best practice, to enable our seafarers to be marketable. The programme is good but there is no need for going out.
Captain Segun Akanbi (President, Maritime Professionals Forum)
In a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power. The Philippines experience is not something new, every batches of the NSDP has one story or the other to tell. We have given our professional perception of the NSDP programme, but NIMASA seems adamant. The last Minister of State for Transportation agrees on a total review of the NSDP, but after she’s been redeployed, that agenda was discarded. Enough of this embarrassment.
Captain Thomas Kemewerigha
From day one, I have been an apostle of not supporting it. It has been a waste of resources, an avenue for fraud, criminality and every negative thing you can think about. I am never in support. Some of us have been advocating that the money used in training cadets abroad should be used in purchasing vessels for our cadets coming out from the indigenous maritime institutions who are not opportuned to get seatime.
Comrade Ifeanyi Abel Chukwu (Merchant Navy Shipping Zone)
My take is that NSDP is no longer relevant. I am stating unequivocally that NSDP Cadet cadre, should be suspended forthwith and the resources should be channeled to train existing officers. It is laughable after spending millions of Dollars to churn out hundreds of cadets in every phase of the programme, they still come back to be trained practically by officers who NIMASA has not deem fit to also benefit in their training. It is pertinent that they should also consider to train the trainer, because you can not give what you don’t have. More so, lots of trained cadets and officers are not engage yet, they are still in the labour market. We don’t have any national carrier that can absolve them, So I don’t know why they keep on wasting tax payers’ money just to train people and dump them in the labour market. It doesn’t make sense!
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