Captain Williams Ogunsakin is the South West Director of Merchant Seafarers Association of Nigeria. In this interview with Joshua Yousouph, he talks about his plans for the College. He also talks about seafaring in Nigeria
For the purpose of this interview, can we meet you Sir?
My name is Captain Ogunsakin Rotimi Isiola Williams. I am a Master Mariner. I have sailed both home and abroad. I am also the Admin of Concerned Seafarers and I am also the South West Director of the Merchant Seafarers Association of Nigeria (MESAN). To crown it up, I am now the Alumni President of Federal College of Fisheries and Marine Technology.
Congratulations on your emergence as the Alumni President of the College, what are your priorities?
First, the school is a professional school; a maritime academy. Although we have some other courses, they are still attached to Maritime. Some of our Alumni are in Asia, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom and other countries and continents, because it is an international school. My first assignment is to gather the people, so that we can be under the same umbrella; both the one at home and in the Diaspora. We are already embarking on it. Asides that, we want to collaborate with the school authorities to ensure that the curriculum is reviewed. We want to make the school to be of international standard, so that the products from the school will be accepted globally. We want to make sure that even the Mandatory that we are doing that costs students about N 100,000 or more will be buried in the course. They will offer it like a subject and by the time they are finishing and collecting their certificates, they will also be given the Mandatory Certificates too. We want to make sure the school is internationally-recognized so that the certificate they would get from the school will be able to compete favorably with other seafarers anywhere else. Although some of us have competed well outside, now we can see that the tempo has come down. The school is supposed to be a regimented school which is para-military. We are supposed to see some people in their uniform matching but unfortunately it is no longer there because there was a little fracas between them and the Nigerian Navy. But now, we would make sure we dialogue with the Navy and the relevant authorities so that peace would reign and things can move forward. Also since the course is a professional course, you cannot see someone who graduated from any University coming to lecture Nautical Science students. It is people that studied Nautical Science that can train Nautical Science. The challenge we are having is that when people leave the school and they have a job, they are well-paid. If not for the fact that the job is breaking, we would have been the best paid persons in the whole world. Someone that is earning up to N2million, you are now telling them to come and work in a school where he will be paid N300,000; it will be difficult. That is why they are finding it hard to get teachers. So what I am going to do as an Alumni President is to talk to my colleagues to be a generation thinker so as to make those coming behind us greater than us. So during their time off, they should find their way to the College of Fisheries and Marine Technology. Even if it is a one or two hours lecture they can give them, they should give them practical experiences. Let them see the sea from the class. I myself will be part of them too. I have been doing it before and I’ll continue to do more. We can lecture them on some of the subjects they don’t have teachers for, free of charge. We are not going to ask for money from them. I will tell my colleagues that we should do this to pay back our Alma Mata.
What other plans do you have for the students of the College?
We would have Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with other with foreign institutions. If we cannot beat them, then we will have to join them. If we continue to struggle with them, some people will end up losing their lives in the process. We are not going to do that. We would diplomatically solve the problem of unemployment. We are going to introduce the establishment of a Foundation where all of us will contribute some money like insurance for educational grants. Every year, we would take two or three outstanding students and follow them up. We would look for where they would serve immediately and when they are done serving, the money will be made available for them to go and study abroad. They would not study in Nigeria so that they can compete with international schools. So when they are done studying abroad and they return, they will sign a bond with us because they will need to pay the money back from their salary when they start working. They will be paying back the money by installment until they fully remit back the money, so that we can also send others coming behind before we now have a bank for education. We may now ask companies to support us.
There is a currently a high rate of unemployment among Nigerian Seafarers. What do you think is responsible for this?
The Certificate they are issuing in Nigeria is responsible for this. The Highest certificate currently being issued in Nigeria is called Master Greater Than 3,000 Gross Tonnes. This means you are going to be Master but they put a clause which is Near Coastal Voyage (NCV). That Near Coastal Voyage means you can operate between African coasts here from Cape Verde to River Congo. But you cannot use that Certificate to work in the American Coast or United Kingdom or Japan Coast. But you can use it within Africa here. That is why it is called Near Coastal Voyage. Another cause is that the personnel working in the decision making areas like the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the Federal Ministry of Transportation are not practically or theoretically competent. They are taking people from other fields like Accountants, Lawyers and others to come and head those parastatals. That is why they don’t know what it takes to have people on board. For them, they see the ship as something very massive that someone cannot carry. That was how I was also looking at it those days. We thought people that are Captains are magicians. But it is not so. That is why they ask the jobs to be given to the foreign players and not Nigeria saying we are not competent. That is what killed us. It is not as if Nigerians cannot do it. I studied in Ghana. When I was in Ghana, I was paid in Dollars. Ghanaians were paid in Cedis, their local currency. The difference was like from Heaven to Earth. So now when Ghanaians come to Nigeria to work, they pay me in Naira and pay Ghanaians in Dollars. So also the people that go to Egypt. Egypt people are receiving Dollars but you as a Nigerian with the same certificate will receive Naira. So I don’t know what created that priority. The problem that is creating unemployment is not seen. There was a gap after the NNSL collapse. The people have started training themselves. Many of them just stay in the office and not go to sea again after the collapse. This is because they don’t imagine themselves working in the coastal areas, unlike someone that has been working on international waters. Those of us working within the coast that time have upgraded ourselves to a stage. What NIMASA should have done is to empower those that are already powered. They will now push them to Chief Officer, Captain, Chief Engineer or 2nd Engineer. By doing so, these unemployed people would have had a job placement. I don’t even know the basis behind the Cadets they are training under the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP). This is because Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron, School of Oceanography, and Nigerian Maritime University are all producing cadets. We have abundant Cadets. It is just like Nigeria sending people out to go and study Medicine. Can it work? The Medical Association will not even agree. There is a big gap and before we can bridge that gap, it will take about ten years. This is because before anybody can become a full-fledged Captain, it will not take less than 10 years.
What do you think is the impact of NSDP to the maritime industry?
Those people NIMASA are training will come back to Nigeria. What we now have is job placement for 2nd officer and 3rd officer. The Chief Officer and 2nd officer are given to the expatriate. So the cadets going from the NSDP have no job placement to enter because there is space for a shift in rank. Unknowingly to the people that initiated that programme, they are creating indirect problems for the people. The first set of NSDP that NIMASA trained were mostly militants and when those boys came back, they had nothing to do. Before, they were operating in the creeks. They now know what GPS and navigation are. They now bought hand GPS, that is AIS installed it on a boat and started operating on sea. They are now Navigators and Engineers. When they go on board you will notice they have all types of crew. They were formerly in the creeks disturbing people but they are no longer in the creeks because they know if they can capture one ship, they will be rich. That is the genesis of this piracy that we cannot stop. They need to stop the NSDP and concentrate on Nigeria. If they use the money they are using for the NSPD to develop Nigerian maritime institutions, we would be better than some schools in the world. That is the genesis of unemployment. They need to do something about this. When I was working, we had five vessels and I am the only Nigerian Captain there. They are not even really white but African whites such as Egyptians, Sudanese and others and they call themselves expatriates. Immediately I came out, they closed the opening. It was only during COVID 19 when they could not get a Captain that they came to look for me and I did the job for two years with no accident or incident. I did not have an issue with them.
There is a question about the competence of Nigerian seafarers. Do you agree that they are not competent?
No, I don’t agree with that. During the Liberian war, who were the captains that took vessels there? We were the one supplying arms. There was a time my vessels carried arms, bombs and others to supply them. We carried their food and provisions including the oil they use to run their vessels. We also carried their men to Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia. I have carried a contingent from Nigeria to Gambia and we did not get lost on the way. Today, we are now running within Nigeria and they are saying Nigerians are not competent. The people that are saying Nigerians are not competent don’t know what they are saying. Most of the time these foreigners don’t know anything. They will look for a very brilliant Second officer to be on board. A second officer is the inaugurating officer. The ship will load at Lagos and a Nigerian man will go on board as a pilot and take the ship from where it is. The foreigner cannot take it alongside the ship. The Nigeria man will take the ship alongside and when they have finished loading, he will help the Captain return the ship back to its original position. Navigation is a straight line. They will just tell the 2nd Officer to plot from here straight to Port Harcourt. When they get to Port Harcourt, Nigerian Pilot boys will come and take the vessel alongside the other one. To come alongside is the major work. They are not doing anything that is serious. If they say Nigerian seafarers are not competent, let them agree that we should use the certificate that they gave us to work and let me bring three or four people. Matrix is using Nigerians all through and they have the biggest vessel in Nigeria and none of them have collided. So many other companies that are using Nigerians, their ships don’t have problems.
Are you saying there are no challenges with Nigerian seafarers?
Nigerians may also have their challenges; like not staying on board and others. These are some of the challenges they have identified. But it is their country and they (the Nigerians) must see their family once in a while. So Nigerians are very competent, even more competent than any seafarer in the world. It is not Nigerians in the 1970s that have 27 foreign going ships flying Nigeria flags all over the world. Who were the Captains? Is it not Nigerians? So who is saying Nigerians are not competent? If they were competent at that time, why would they not be competent at this time? We are competent.
