Can you please tell us what informed the idea of setting up the Association of Marine Electronic Radio Officers?
Can you please tell us what informed the idea of setting up the Association of Marine Electronic Radio Officers?
Sometimes ago there was a lot of misunderstanding among the Nigeria Merchant Navy Officers and Water Transport Senior Staff Association, so we decided to carve a niche for ourselves, then some of us who are from the communication aspect of marine decided to form an association that can assist the Federal Government of Nigeria on the most important area of communication at sea that has been neglected in Nigeria. We are affiliate of International Transport Workers Federation [ITF] ,International Maritime Organization and other maritime organizations .Most of us, because of the nature of our job ,we travel round the world and we have been able to associate with all these organizations all over the world to find out the areas where Nigerians are lacking in communication field .If you look at Nigeria today, we have developed other technologies all around, the area that has been neglected is the marine department and the reason is that federal government has not been able to bring up schools, thus it is only one in the whole of Nigeria of about 160 million population ,we only have the Maritime Academy of Nigeria in Oron ,which is not enough to train all the navigators ,captains and engineers in the field. In1972,Gowon was the first Head of State that was able to send so many Nigerians abroad in the various field of engineering to train technicians ,captains ,electronic officers and all categories of engineers .Now if you look at Nigeria today ,they have all been absorbed in companies like NNPC , NPA ,Shell ,Mobil and other oil companies in Nigeria that are in existence , they have taken all. Now we have old engineers which I want to believe that very soon they will go extinct and it will be very bad for the sector because we will have a situation where foreigners will take over the maritime sector and we all know that we do not have employment ,we are not generating much employment for our youths ,then when you look at the foreigners, they will feel comfortable looking for jobs in the country instead of us creating employment for the youths of the country ,building more maritime schools in Nigeria. Ghana for instance have maritime academy in Accra that trains all kinds of category of engineers in the marine field and as such they are able to sustain their economy because they do not need to go outside. They even supply engineers, captains, electronic officers to other countries of the world, through their merchant navy officers association to go and work abroad and gain more experience and at the end of the day they bring it to Accra to improve the economy of their country and create more jobs.
You talked about the old mariners going extinct, what is the way out of it?
The way out of it is for government to create more maritime training institutions the way they are establishing more universities in the country and there should be awareness; in other words they should have at least one in the federal capital territory, one in Lagos ,and all other maritime states of the country .They have established one in Oron ,they should have one in Port Harcourt, one in Lagos and in all the seaports where all maritime activities are available and when you do that you will train up all the engineers in the various categories like master mariners who will be future pilots for your country ,you have engineers who will man your ships even the marine architect then you can develop all the various areas of marine engineering. For example Shell has taken away all the engineers from the defunct Nigeria National Shipping Line and as it looks some of them are training other engineers working under their department and by the time they will leave it will only be benefit to all these companies; like LNG and other oil and gas firms in Nigeria where most of the captains are at the moment .The knowledge they have gained they are passing it to fellow Nigerians to create more jobs. Now when they eventually get old and die, we no longer have people to replace them, rather we will be looking outside Nigeria to go and bring expatriate to come and work for us. Like I said before, the marine engineers we have today will soon go extinct if government refuse to float more maritime institutions and national carrier. Most of us are training our children to take over from the job we learn, for instance, I am training my son to become a marine engineer because it is not something that you acquire over night; it is something you acquire over a long period of time. In my own case, I spent 25 years at sea, before I was able to come into the field of surveying for radio and communication equipment because I have been able to work with them, I know the equipment, I can tell when they are in bad shape and all the necessary equipment needed at sea.
Who should be held responsible for this?
I don’t know how to go about it, corruption is the root why NNSL was liquidated, I remember they gave us 21 ships; all brand new to manage, but due to mismanagement and corruption, it was run by government officials who were there, this is what folded up NNSL, because it resulted into deterioration ,whereby there was no fund to repair or maintain the ships and the vessels were getting dilapidated and the vessels were removed from services and sold cheap and at the long run the company folded up.
As the president of AMERO, what is the strength of the association and how many branches do you have nationwide?
At the moment we have only one, but what we do get to other people within the seaports states is to rotate holding of the meeting so that members in other states can be able to attend, but to function properly we need government assistance but when you ask for it they don’t give you. What we do is that we render advice to government in marine sector for example if NIMASA is holding conference or ITF are in Nigeria and they invite us to make our contributions, we go there to enlighten our people on how they will best resolve the issues that are abound on our territorial waters. For example during the introduction of the tracking system that is, the Long Range Tracking System [LRTS) into Nigeria ,we were the first to know about it because we are marine surveyors and we have worked in the field for years .Most of our vessels like the Automatic Identification System were introduced from ITF to the whole world ,all nations have to comply, all ships have to meet the demand, I mean everybody have to meet the demand .We are the first to know and it is our duty as Nigerians to inform our government the area they are lacking ,and it is their responsibility to make sure people are trained to bring these things into effectiveness, it is NIMASA that is going to effect it ,that is there port state control to make sure that the standard that are set by very nation is met by Nigeria and it is at such conferences when we meet ,ITF is there ,IMO is there. Because we do not have schools to train these people and it makes is very difficult to comply because there are no schools to train the young lads and at the end of the day the last resort is to send them abroad for the training which I must say is expensive, therefore it is for the government to look inward. It is for them to set up maritime schools all over Nigerians just like we have universities scattered all over the country, the commercial areas of the marine has been neglected by the government for a very long time and it is only the naval officers that are doing something serious about it.
It is obvious that our territorial waters are not safe as a result of piracy and sea robberies, what is your reaction to that?
The biggest problem we have in the industry is the management of safety, in other countries of the world that is why they do not toy with, the Nigeria navy, I don’t know the command that is going to them because I was at sea before and pirate are robbing us and we call on to the navy, but all to no avail and without response .Even when you are to contact them, they will not come to rescue, but in other countries ,if there is sea pirate in an area and you call on the naval channel within the next 25 to 30 minutes the naval personnel with all their patrol boats will be seen all over the place scamming over for the pirates that are rampaging the territory .If you look at Africa and the Far East, these are the only areas that pirate activities are thriving and the reason is that in the advance countries there are special radio stations or special tracking stations which are very good and Nigeria does not have a station and if you have a tracking station and there is pirate attack at sea ,any vessel sail across that region can give information to the tracking station of his location and where the pirate attack is going on .now such information can be passed to the navy or other security agencies at sea to go for the very position the attack is being carried out to squash it, but we don’t have such in the country. In the whole of Africa, there is none, it is only at the Suez canal that we have just one .If we can fix one in Nigeria alone, we will take care of the whole of West Africa down to South Africa, because you need to have a tracking station through which you can locate where the attack is being carried out .
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