IF NIGERIAN SEAFARERS ARE WELL TRAINED, THEY’LL GET JOBS
Recently, the Director General, NIMASA, Mr Temisan Omatseye led members of the executive management to a commemorative press briefing where he gave the score card of the one year old management. We bring you highpoints of the interactions.
On MAN Oron
The issue quite clearly is that the maritime academy in Oron is established by an Act and it is an institution that is independent and also has its own governing council, so we are supporting them, we are making their funds available to them, by statute, we provide five percent of our Internally Generated Revenue to them. We have moved N1.4billion to them; we have some more pending to be moved across to them. The upgrading of the academy to a university is for their council to decide and not really my position, my position is capacity building and increasing of seafarers in Nigeria, therefore I will not be restricted by being nationalistic, if I have to send anybody to Timbuktu to become a seafarer for the development of Nigeria economy I will do it, it is very key that we train Nigerians, the Maritime Academy in Oron can not train more than 200 seafarers a year, meanwhile we have a target of over 50,000, so are we going to be here for our children and children yet unborn to train in maritime academy. We must explore other opportunities of training our seafarers.
On the Repair of NPA’s Floating Dock in Ghana
Why I wept was that we are the giant of Africa, but the giant is taking his work to our……, that is what I was weeping for, not that we cannot. NPA also has its Act, but why I was weeping was that because I am here responsible for shipping development and we are unable to do that, the dock yard has just been there doing nothing, that we cannot repair that flocking dock in Nigeria is painful, that our vessels are going to other ship yards for dry docking, for regulatory dry docking requirements is painful. That is why we have to come together and develop our own in-house capacity, that is why we have to set up the physical incentives that those people who own the shipyards can come and do it here in Nigeria, and for me to tell you that I am pained and I want to do something about it does not mean I like what they are doing, I don’t, but how can I do it when I cannot help them.
On NIMASA’s Seminar for Judges as a Duplication of Shippers’ Council’s
Well, they say it is the man that the shoe pains in the legs that knows how tight the shoe is, Shippers’ Council knows what they are doing, we know our own problems and Shipper Council cannot talk our problems more than we can, they set their agenda for their judges’ conference, but we had a seminar to educate the judges, we did not go for a razzmatazz and I am not saying that’s what they did, but we sat down and went section by section, remember they did their conference in Abuja which I went for, what I am trying to say is that for NIMASA, what we did was that it was a learning programme; where we had eminent jurists talking through the sessions and the impact of that as it relates to my Act, Shippers’ Council will not talk about NIMASA Act, I am the only one that can talk about my Act, Shippers Council cannot talk about the national shipping Act, I am the one that can talk about it or even Cabotage. Our roles are very clear, so I do what relates to me and I have no confession that if Shippers Council do their own; that is their budget, I have budget to train my own stakeholders to know what I am doing and how they can assist.
On Insufficient Fleet in Nigeria
I always make a statement that Cabotage is not all about vessels and vessels alone; it has to do also with manpower development and in-house infrastructural development. If you buy a brand new car, tomorrow it is no longer the dealer’s problem, it becomes the mechanic’s problem, same thing with the ship, the moment you buy a vessel, it is no longer the shipyard’s problem, it is now the ship repair yard issue, even if we decided tomorrow (which we are looking at), to support all Nigerian ship owners to buy their vessels, if don’t have the crew properly trained to do it, its like you buying cars without drivers to drive them. Many of the crew men that we have were from National shipping line; we do not have a new crop of officers that are trained. Getting the vessels is not a problem, we will buy these vessels and guess what, the Filipinos will be the ones to come and captain the vessels for us, we are working in tandem with that so everything must flow together, ship repair facility, training of seafarers, vessels acquisition must all come together because if anything happens to a vessel the implication is very strong and if you don’t have well trained officers to be onboard them it will not work.
On The Salvage Of Vessels At Takwa Bay
If a plane crashes tomorrow, will you call an investigation panel before you go and safe the people? So what is NIMASA to the shipping industry and NCAA to the aviation industry? Are we not regulators, do we go and sit and say ‘well this has come to the beach, but lets still stay for few months to plan how we will do it’ what if their was a spill, do I wait until an inauguration panel is set up to tell us how to remove it? I think that is not it, our functions are very clear, we are a regulatory, safety and security agency, if there is an emergency which was what happened on the 14th of February which we felt was an act of God and a national disaster, our job as an agency is to react and the procurement Act allows us to react and talk after, but if we all agree here that we should talk first and react later, then we will do that, that is our position. We have to inaugurate a panel but we need to know the remote causes of those vessels coming ashore, because we also have another 150 unmanned vessels sleeping at the anchorage, if a storm comes tomorrow again, they are going to come back. I think we all need to go and see the ecological disaster that the vessels have caused to the beach before we begin to talk, you see what East and West mole did to bar beach, that is what these vessels in the long run will do to Takwa bay side and then when Apapa port opens up to the Atlantic ocean, they will now begin to see that was is better for us to spend US$2million today or begin to dredge sand for billions to fill it up again and reclaim the ocean back. It is a fact, world wild life federation have talked about it, NCF has also talked about it, go and look at what is happening at Lekki and Ajah, the beach is disappearing, it’s not that we don’t know what to do, but let me tell you something, we have lost sight of what to do in this country because of corruption, there are things that we have to do, but because we believe everybody is a thief then we don’t do it, when people hear billions of dollars they will say the ‘man is a thief’, but they don’t realize the impact that the work will cost a nation. I like my team because they make use of the right paths, you will not see me approve a document without my team recommending it to me, but I put them through on what the best things to be done, that is the problem we are facing, that is why we could only do four vessels. We could only work at springtide and this lasted for just 10 days, it is when the ocean is at high tide that we could work and we could only operate for 10 days when their was springtide and when we lost the springtide, we had to stop because the water had receded, we had to dredge round the vessels at high tide so that the vessel could float and we could pull it out with two large anchor handling trucks in the middle of the ocean which was imported from Ivory Coast.
On Training of Ratings
We are looking at some schools to do three months trainings as ratings, NDDC has also made it very clear, the Managing Director has spoken to us that they want to get the best so they nominate over 2,000 people to us as part of the ratings training programme, but we want to do quite a bit of them here. As for the Niger Delta; they say he who pays the piper dictates the tune, so if they bring the money we will contribute, we are working on a three months programme because we believe that after the three months programme, we can push them out. I can assure you that if 25 percent of seafarers world wide are Filipino, Nigerians will get where to work if they get the qualifications. I know that in America, a lot of vessels are seating alongside because they find the job of ratings too cheap for them and I know a lot of Nigerians are willing to take up those posts. Norway is looking for ratings, Europe are also looking for ratings seriously, so getting our ratings to work world wide will not be a problem for us, we will just make sure that they are trained and they meet international standard.
On Alleged Exclusions from the NSDP
It is in participation with states that have expressed their willingness, so allegations of people being excluded do not come into it, if your State Governor does not want to participate we cannot force him to participate.
On Need to Partner with SMEDAN
So far we have sent about 10 projects and same were rejected, but currently two are receiving attention, some people cannot defend their proposals but this is an area where we want to record success but their proposals can not stand the test of time. Unfortunately our investors are not very serious. The programme is going ahead we did the training and everything else but unfortunately, the business plans that came could not stand the test of time, so SMEDAN rejected them because everything must be on pure business plan.
On constraints and Challenges
We have faced a lot of constraints as anyone will naturally face constraints, but we are overcoming them and these are all challenges that we will like to face. On our port and flag state responsibilities, the challenge is that 80 percent of our surveyors were non- exclusive surveyors; this was totally unacceptable to the IMO, so what is required of us to do in effect is to have enough surveyors within NIMASA to actually carry out our port and flag state responsibilities. But what you will find out is that in the new restructuring programme, NIMASA will be represented in every single port, terminal and jetties in Nigeria, the port and flag state responsibilities are to be carried out on every single vessel that comes into the port, we are moving our structures to become more zonal rather than a headquarter- centred. So what you will find is that our port and flag state responsibility will become more responsive, no vessel will land on Nigerian shores without a trained NIMASA staff to board that vessel and that is going on right now.
On tanker vetting
It was our responsibility, but I heard that there was a small tussle between the people doing it for NMA, then and all of a sudden it has been stopped. What we are trying to do now is to revive it with NIMASA people being trained, I always believe that sometimes it is better to give professionals, but in any case we are looking at taking tanker vetting responsibility, yes somebody is doing it right now, but he is not a NIMASA staff. The recognized staff on IMO for tanker vetting is a NIMASA staff but unfortunately we have not carried out that responsibility, but part of our project for this year is for us to carry out our tanker vetting responsibility.
Ship Registry Project With LNG
I believe the report is ready in and we have already started the implementation, it is not 50 percent, they have completed their own side and have done the presentation to us, we received the report and we are in the process of implementing it in NIMASA right now and I think soon we will be having a meeting on designated roles and we can get a report back to them on the implementation of that.
On Report Of Attacks On Vessels To IMB
A lot of attacks happen here that we receive, but we are not obligated to report to the IMB, we are obligated to report to the IMO and we have been doing that, IMB is an independent body and we are not under obligation to report to them.
On Registration of Ship Chandlers
We don’t register ship chandlers, it is done by the Nigeria Customs Service, but under shipping development, our aim is to encourage them, it is not our responsibility, but in the spirit of Cabotage, we intend to assist ship chandlers and I think there is a committee in shipping development department that is already looking at that, we have invited them to know where their problems are and we are going to take it up as part of our fiscal incentives.
On the Maritime Academy of Nigeria in Badagry
The owners of the land said they want their property back, ASCON said they are expanding so fast and that the land that they have given to us is not being utilized and they want their property back. But, the minister has just approved a committee to carry out a research on where we can set up another academy, that committee is going to start very soon. We are looking at about four or five. But then, it will be a private sector and not a government thing, we are going to invite those who want to set up maritime academies to come and join us in establishing them so that we will just create fiscal incentives for them to be able to carry the academy.
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