A maritime expert Engineer Basil Uba has raised the alarm over proliferation of fake Certificates of Competency (CoC) in the Nigerian maritime industry.
A CoC is a document issued by Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) that the named seafarer has fulfilled the requirements of receiving and performing a particular contract on ship.
Engineer Uba while speaking at the 5th annual conference/ Annual General Meeting of Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture (MENA) Division of the Nigerian Society of Engineer held in Lagos on Tuesday last week said lots of CoC obtained by mariners are fake.
Uba further lamented that the proliferation of fake certificates have affected the maritime industry even as he called on the NIMASA to arrest the situation.
Uba said lack of verification of CoC is affecting the growth of the industry.
He stated that with the proliferation of maritime academies in the country, there is need for the apex maritime regulatory agency to scrutinize, coordinate and monitor their activities so as to protect the process leading to the issuance of the COC.
"There should be an avenue to verify every certificate. There should be a portal where I can verify the genuineness or otherwise of a Certificate. If not the effort to build our maritime education will be plagued with lot of issues."
"There must be a standard check or a portal developed by maritime agency for the certificates to be verified and this is affecting the industry," he said.
On his part, Chairman of MENA, Engineer, Charles Otuonye stated that education and continuous training are the foundations of true productive maritime nation.
Engineer Otuonye added that, "you will agree with me that the building block necessary to support ship building and shipping is vital and the Nigeria's educational objective in this 21st century should functional, skill oriented, artificial intelligence oriented, idea technological oriented to meet the need at the floor of industries"
"We need to train the youth to have skills, creativity and necessary innovations to support Nigeria economy, most especially at this time of democracy and economic challenges ",he added.
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