“I don’t think anybody will get that CVFF until it disappears”
“Almost all the vessels operating in Nigeria are manned by whites or foreigners”
“NNSL failed because there was no International Safety Management Code”
What do you think can be done to enhance the curriculum of Cadets?
The curriculum is there, all we need to do is to look at it and introduce some more practical approach to it. The nautical cadet is a trainee, an officer in training. So when you finish the theoretical class, you will go for sea time. In Egypt, as you are finishing that class, you will go for sea training after every three or four months. By the time you are done, you would have gotten the sea time that you need. Then you go directly to do your Certificate of Competency (CoC). Now the government has to get ships for schools as training. The School of Oceanography in the 1980’s had three ships before; when I was there. We had the opportunity to go to sea with those vessels although they use it for surveys and for fishing. But it is better than now that they don’t have anything. So, the government should allocate vessels to these schools then they should make sure that if Nigeria has ships which are Nigeria-owned, they can be able to mandate the Nigeria Cadet to go on board to go and serve. Maybe 10 people on each vessel. But now, the foreign vessels that are running cannot take more than two persons. Sometimes it doesn’t even take at all. That is only what we can do for the cadets to empower them more.
How do you think the old students of your College and members of the alumni can be helped?
We can help those who are yet to get jobs by talking to the authority; that is NIMASA, to do certificate revalidation which they did in 2003. That time there were allegations of Nigeria holding fake certificates? The Nigerian Maritime Authority (NMA) at that time recalled all the certificates from everyone. They now did assessments by calling everyone individually. When they assess you and you are not good enough, your name will be enlisted also and you will be put where you belong. What you are able to answer will determine where you will be. Some people were initially answering the Captain rank but they brought them down to 2nd Officer. Some people even had lesser certificates and they were awarded a greater one after the assessment. The mistake they made at that time was that they limited the certificate to 3,000 less gross tonnage. That is another story. We will need to talk to the government to help revalidate Nigerian seafarers. Let them call everyone holding current or expired papers. Let them evaluate them and position them where they are supposed to belong and make sure that the certificate they are now holding is authentic. If anyone has a certificate that is not authentic but he has been working without any accident, they should engage him, interview and set an examination for him. If he passes the examination then they can issue an authentic certificate to him. With that we would now have the confidence to present your certificate and they will employ you. This should be done so that those who are unemployed outside can be getting jobs to do. They should also make sure all the vessels that are within Cabotage range should allow Nigerian cadets to board them. A lot of people have Nigeria certificates but they cannot use it because they say it is not foreign going and the vessels working in Nigeria are not foreign going. They are operating within Nigeria here. They are home trade/Near Coastal Vessels, but they bring foreigners to come.
Ship owners have complained about fake certificates among Nigerian seafarers, what is your reaction to this?
With the Certificate they give us, they cannot defend it for the people. So far the ship is working in Nigeria, those vessels are supposed to be Cabotage vessels. Even though they are owned by foreigners or whatever, they are supposed to be Cabotage vessels. The vessels working in Nigeria should be manned by our own people to protect our territorial integrity. Our territorial integrity has been compromised because of that reason. Almost all or majority of all the vessels operating in Nigeria are manned by whites or foreigners. There is nothing secret in Nigeria that they don’t know; which is not supposed to be. So the certificate has limited the Nigeria Seafarer. So when you have the certificate, they ask you to go and get foreign ticket. That is why we have fake certificates. So people will now go and look for where they can get an equivalent of foreign-going ticket. When they are getting it, the same certificates that these people are bringing, sometimes if you bring it as a Nigerian, they will call your own fake and the white man will be using it. We are cheating ourselves too much. Until they are able to have confidence in their people we will continue to have this problem. This NCV is all over the world, not only in Nigeria. I have a friend that is in Canada. He said everybody there is holding NCV and all their vessels are manned by their citizens. They don’t allow foreigners to come and work there.
What is your take on the delay of the disbursement of CVFF to ship owners?
The problem extends to the ship ownership. The association of ship owners are having problems. In Nigeria, how many actual ship owners are we having now? There are not many. It is either they partner with foreigners or they don’t. Looking at the money that is under the care of NIMASA, the conditions they put down are not realistic. I don’t think anybody will get that money until it disappears. They are joking with that money and one day it will be nowhere to be found. Someone smart will go and clear off the fund and we would keep telling the same old story. The man will fly away and they will tell you that he is in jail abroad whereas he is enjoying himself there. So that money is a two percent contribution from every vessel operating in Nigeria. It was when the ship owners were operating that was when they were collecting that money. Why don’t we get a corporation just like these BRT buses in Lagos? We can get something like that for ships. It should not answer NNSL. NNSL failed because there was no International Safety Management (ISM) Code. It was not in existence at that time. I was taught in school, that why Black Star Line and NNSL failed was because there was no ISM Code. With the ISM Code, you must class the ship and also the company. You must ensure that they are in that Class which is the International Association of Survey (IAS). That survey will make sure that everything in that vessel is up to date. Repairs and planned maintenance will be carried out. Somebody will come and audit the office. Anyone without a certificate will be asked to leave until they possess a certificate before they can operate. If they follow the rules, Nigeria can float a company and it will survive. It would not be like those days where there was no law. That was why the companies collapsed. But this time around, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has seen that a lot of companies that sprang up have collapsed prematurely. So, they made the ISM Code so that Safety management system, Crew management system and other management systems will be in practice. They should not just take all these ‘India Class’ or some local class. They should take Louis, GNDLV, Germanize and other better Classes. Let them class the company and class the ship and you will see that nothing will happen. It will work and operate till the end and there will be no loss.
Are you not worried about the ‘mushroom’ maritime schools that we have in Nigeria today?
We are worried. But the issue is who is approving them? Who is the authority approving them? What are you approving for? It is like we are trying to mislead our people and we are shouting that people are into Piracy and Internet fraud. Why won’t they go into these crimes when as at last year we had a census, we have 17 private maritime institutions in Nigeria. We do not have 17 ships in Nigeria. If each school brings one cadet and we don’t have 17 ships so where will they work when they graduate? That is why most of them are wandering about on the streets and they have had an idea on navigation, how to use radar and compass, they know how to run the engine. Those ideas are sufficient to work at sea. So when all these bad boys see them, they will capture and lure them to work with them based on their knowledge and skills. They are vulnerable. It is another threat to the maritime industry in Nigeria. If we are going abroad, who will accept us? Our certificates are not in any part of the world. That is where Nigeria should work on. We should be the one training other African countries like Mali, Niger and others because they are landlocked. So, those of them that would like to work at sea will come and learn. But we are not having it. The law now is that if the UK helps you to train your citizens, after the theoretical training, they send you back to your country. They will tell you their own children also want to serve on their ship; asking you to go to your flagship to do your cadet. Many of the people sponsored by NIMASA are still in Nigeria here. Most times it is the manning agents that help these boys to get placements with international links; meanwhile the boys are still in Nigeria. Do you know many Indians and Filipinos that are looking for a jobs? So you are saying you want to go there and work? It is a big lie. They are making it difficult for those that are trained locally to have placements.
What is the way forward?
I will not say they should close these maritime institutions because the people used massive capital to start them and it has caused them so much money to get approval. But we must get massive ships to absorb them. We should get ship building companies. The Cabotage Act says the ship that should be used in Nigeria should be built in Nigeria, manned by Nigerians and owned by Nigerians. That “built in Nigeria” has not been complied with for the past 20 years that the Law has been in existence. If we are building ships in Nigeria now, some of the students will go and study Ship Building Technology, Naval Architecture or some other related courses. If Nigerians own the vessels, they will employ some people to be managers in the office. If Nigerians are manning the ship they will employ the Crew on board to go and work. If Nigeria complies with the Cabotage Law, all these problems will be a thing of the past.
Do you think we need a National Carrier?
Yes we need it. With all the containers we see littering everywhere, Nigeria does not have a ship carrying any of the containers. All of them are brought here by foreigners. Not only that, we are lamenting that the price of oil is expensive. Oil prices should not have been expensive, but the crude is being exported by foreign ships and the ships are charging heavily. The money for the freight goes to them. When they also refine the oil and bring it back, the money for the freight goes back to them. How much are we getting and we say we are oil giants. That is why we are not getting it in Nigeria. If we are the owner of that vessel, the money for the freight will come back to Nigeria. Before, Nigeria distributed oil to almost all African countries. I was alive then. So if they float a National Carrier, they should not float only Cargo carrier this time around, but also tanker. They should have at least two super tankers that are world class and can go to the United States or the UK. We should also have Cargo ships that will carry containers. There should be a percentage of containers coming to Nigeria that should be carried by Nigerian ships. Then we would have our people having jobs on foreign lines. By the time we have people on foreign vessels in those days, when we have Nigerian lines, we would leave Nigeria and go to Iranian companies to go and work because they know we have experience. Some of them go to the US to work but today we don’t have that again. Having a national carrier will boost the employment of seafarers seriously.
