The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has said that not less than 90 cadets who registered in the National Seafarer Development Programme (NSDP) failed and are unable to complete their training, and that one cadet died in the course of the training programme.
Acting Director General of NIMASA, Mr. Haruna Baba Jauro gave this figure last week while briefing members of the Senate Committee on Marine Transport who visited the agency’s office in Apapa, Lagos.
Jauro also said that it costs $24,000 to train a cadet in the on-going programme, but lamented that after the training, NIMASA has a challenge of placing the cadets on-board vessels for sea time.
Giving a breakdown of cadets under the NSDP programme, the NIMASA DG said a total number of admission so far is 2,364, the total graduated is 435, and 90 have failed or withdrawn from the programme.
He said that another batch of 300 ratings are currently stuck in Nigeria and yet to resume for their training in Malaysia because of documentation. These according to the DG are going for junior level trainings like artisans in Malaysia but they are still around.
“There is challenge of placing the cadets on-board vessels for sea time, it cost 24,000USD to train a cadet, if you have a hundred of them you will know the amount is enormous”
“We have those who began the course but withdrew either academically or due to health problems, we have 90 of them that began but could not finish, 1 died, we have 1,548 still in school”
“So far, 2,600 cadets have benefited from the programme, some have finished, some still in the programme while some are undergoing sea time” he told the lawmakers.
Jauro said that there is an urgent need to improve on Nigeria’s seafaring capacity because recent statistics showed that the average age of the Nigerian seafarer is 50 years.
“This means that unless we train more, we may not have them again, so in the efforts to do that we have institutions to train them. We are in liaison with six universities and the maritime university”
“Unless we have the national carrier, the seafarers will find it difficult to go for seatime, we have cargo, the manpower, what we need is the shipping line which will give the advantage the country needs”
The NIMASA boss equally assured that the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) is still intact. He assured that for, the fund has risen to N51.8billion and that the figure is still changing.
Jauro said NIMASA has registered 1,975 ships, and that its total gross tonnage is 2.8million tonnes which according to him is low compared to the number of the vessels.
He said that the average number of vessels that call at Nigerian ports per month is between 550 and 600.
“The CVFF monies collected are there, the operations of it, the guidelines is still on ground and the monies collected for it are there, the distribution is what is on-going, the certification of those who are qualified”.
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