As Nigeria joins the rest of the world to commemorate the 2015 Seafarers Day, maritime industry stakeholders and cadets have called on the Federal Government to take a second look at the National Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP).
This was part of the views expressed at a seminar organized in Apapa Lagos yesterday by the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria (MARAN) titled: "Seafarers in the Democratic Dispensation: 'How Far Have We Fared'
As Nigeria joins the rest of the world to commemorate the 2015 Seafarers Day, maritime industry stakeholders and cadets have called on the Federal Government to take a second look at the National Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP).
This was part of the views expressed at a seminar organized in Apapa Lagos yesterday by the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria (MARAN) titled: "Seafarers in the Democratic Dispensation: 'How Far Have We Fared'
Leading the anti-NSDP campaign, Chief Executive Officer of Starz Investment Company Limited, Engr. Greg Ogbeifun said that majority of the NSDP cadets that the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is exporting to Europe for training do not have identities.
He said that rather than pick cadets with no identities from the various states, NIMASA should pick cadets from the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN) in Oron , Akwa Ibom State, Federal College of Fisheries and Oceanography, as well as other accredited maritime academies and send them for the NSDP training.
Ogbeifun called on government to take a second look at the programme and get shipowners on board in order to make inputs and provide more sea time for the cadets.
"They think there is a gap in MAN Oron but there is none, the NSDP is not a political desire to get result, it is a political desire to fill pockets. Maritime Academies in the country have shown standard, only a very small percentage of the cadets trained in Nigeria actually have identity. He added that, working with NIMASA, shipowners can now go to Oron and copy what NLNG is doing"
"By so doing, the seafarers will have identity, at the end of the year if they are producing 400 cadets they will have where to go to; getting the shipowners to key into NSDP is a challenge", he admitted.
Ogbeifun who is also the President of Shipowners Association of Nigeria (SOAN) promised that his association is donating a 100 cadets training opportunity to NIMASA NSDP programme. All the cadets going through the programme according to him must come from MAN Oron and other accredited institutions.
"We are tying it to the institutions so that the cadets can identify with the companies, they will know that as soon as they end, they are going to work on board the ships. SOAN is putting this together and it may be a pilot scheme that other shipowners will want to emulate", he added.
Also speaking at the forum, Vice President of the Nigerian Association of Master Mariners (NAMM); Capt. Jide Olugunwa advised that the Federal Government should ensure that the NSDP is not an entirely NIMASA-owned initiative.
He said that it must be talked through with appropriate stakeholders, especially the shipowners, and it must be focused on benefiting the nation.
He reiterated that the NIMASA NSDP ought to have been used to complement the gap in MAN Oron, and not to pick fresh people without experience.
According to him, the input into the NSDP must be from MAN Oron and College of Fisheries, and that there must be a data base, the cadets must be registered.
"We have institutions that are training cadets, it would have a loop of saying, how many cadets are coming into the institution, how many bed space do we need, internally there are opportunities, tie it to the opportunities"
"Nigerian Association of Master Mariners has not been fully aligned with that programme, if you start something for five years what is the output? If you send a young man to Europe and you expect them to come back, they don't have identity, it doesn't solve the problem"
"People have done time in Oron, they need sea time, there may be gaps, but the gaps can be filled, you leave all of those and you pick other people because states were bringing names, you take them abroad and you expect them to come back? From the inception we have seen that the programme cannot fly" he said.
Also speaking at the even, President of MARAN; Mrs Ifeanyinwa Obi urged Nigerian shipowners to be sympathetic to the course of Nigerian seafarers.
According to her, many of the shipowners in Nigeria are selfish and self-centered cabals who cannot be bothered about the fate of Nigerian seafarers.
"This is an industry of big men, but they mind their own business, they are in their own world and they stay alone, it is very few of them that come up to speak, there are many shipowners that cannot be bothered" she said.
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