The Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron, Akwa Ibom, says its focus is on training quality cadets in line with the international best practice.
The Acting Rector of the academy, retired Commodore Duja Effedua, gave the assurance in an interview in Abuja.
Effedua made the remarks in response to some claims by the people that the academy had not admitted students for two years.
He said that there was no admission in 2017 session only “because the facilities are overstretched’’.
The rector explained that the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) advised that maritime academies should reduce the number of cadets being trained worldwide.
“Nigeria is not exempted because there will not be ships to place them on and this may lead to redundancy,’’ Effedua said.
He quoted IMO as observing that there were too many cadets in the classrooms.
According to him, the IMO classroom standard is 30 cadets in class.
“The academy was not shut down for two years as claimed.
“There was no admission in 2017 session; we wrote to JAMB to exempt us for that session only so that we can reorganise ourselves.
“That we skipped admission for one year does not mean we don’t have cadets on ground.
The rector explained that the hostel was congested as a room meant for two people was now harbouring about 18 cadets.
He added that because the facilities were being overstretched, the Interim Management Committee (IMC) advised that academy to skip admission until 2018.
“Our focus is the next batch of cadets; we want to give them the best.
“We don’t want to train quantity, we want to train quality, which means the number of intake will reduce.’’
Effedua, however, commended the IMC inaugurated by the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi in June 2017, for reviewing the curriculum in line with international best practices.
He said that the committee also invited IMO and United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) to make the final adjustments to the curriculum.
The rector said the management had resolved some of the challenges facing the academy.
He said that the management has placed advertisement for procurement of more equipment, lecturers and non-academic staff.
According to him, the committee discovered that some lecturers have fake results and will be replaced.
“So, we want to get the best hand on board as we will recruit about 16 lecturers.’’
The IMC was inaugurated in June 9, 2017 to restructure MAN, Oron, by reviewing its curriculum in line with international best practices and also to solve some of the challenges facing the academy.
Discussion about this post