Engr. Matthew Alalade (Former President, Merchant Navy)
The Certificate of Competency (CoC) is not encouraging and there should be more Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with at least 30 nations (with mainly first-class nations). Also, Nigeria must register at the White List/IMO ratings. The NSDP is just propaganda programmed for capital flight. No impact of those who passed out at global trade, for it should be a continuous exercise to the apex management level of Masters, First and Chief Engineers as well as First class motors. More importantly, training ships not available in the country.
Chris Sadoh (Stars Maritime)
Nigeria is not in the white list of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). We are only a maritime nation because nature has defined us to be so. You can imagine that Nigeria does not have a national shipping line. Then what maritime nation are we? We have a lot to do to measure up with the standard of IMO.
Engr. Wale George (Vice President, Nigerian Merchant Navy)
In terms of skill and experience, Nigerian seafarers are the best in Africa, anywhere they go, they are the best in terms of skill and experience, but their certificate continue to keep them below their contemporaries; as it is limiting them, it doesn’t allow them to fly, it makes others who are not as experienced as them to look down on them as Nigeria doesn’t have MoU with the big maritime nations, this limits the acceptability of our CoC and prevent our seafarers from sailing.
Officer Utibe-Abasi Isaac (Maritime Graduate)
There are several reasons Nigerian seafarers are not competitive with their counterparts. As a Seafarer and an Officer, I will say that our academic institutions have failed to meet up with global best practices in terms of training and education. Government must invest in the government maritime schools and improve in their academic and professional training and also provide practical aid, particularly training vessels for the students for practical learning and field experience.
More importantly, our regulatory body must stand up to the task to ensure the implementation of the Cabotage Act, because Nigeria has some of the best sailors in the world, but lack of opportunity to display their professionalism has sent them to the back bench. Companies prefer to employ foreigners as experts, pay them in hard currencies while our seafarers that can offer the same or better services are neglected, and if by chance they are employed, they are paid peanuts, treated as inferior and like slaves in their fatherland.
Comrade Ifeanyi Abel Chukwu (Admin/Asst. Secretary, Merchant Navy)
If you use NSDP graduates to measure the competitiveness of Nigeria seafarers, then you may be right because presently, there is this realization that they are nowhere to be found in the labour market. Be that as it may, the reality on ground is that Nigeria seafarers are among the best in the world. They are making giant strides in the world. As we speak, many of them that I know personally are in countries like Saudi Arabia, UK and so many other maritime nations of the world; doing well.
Captain Thomas Kemewerigha
We are supposed to have Bilateral agreements with other countries to carve out principles on how our boys can be employed. We cannot be competitive when you are not in a race. The NSDP created a gap which later got widening everyday because it is capital intensive. We got it wrong because it was politicised. The cadets were forced to go for tourism without having a proper perspective of what they were going for. Seafaring is a global job with a lot of politics attached to it. We have a lot of foreign vessels operating in Nigeria that can absorb all Nigerian seafarers. All we need is training vessels for the students coming out from the academies.
Captain Williams Ogunsakin (Master Mariner)
In Nigeria, the challenge we have is not even the cadets, but the officers. Many of our officers need money to further their education. We have people that can do the job in Nigeria but they said we don’t have foreign tickets. I don’t know what NIMASA intends to gain with the issue of NSDP because we have Oceanography, the Academy in Oron, Maritime Academy in Delta and so many other private institutions. There are about 27 of them which are approved by NIMASA and are training cadets. Why are they still trying to send people abroad to waste our resources?
They should have as well made the government-owned institutions to be well-funded so that we can have the capacity to train people to the maximum. If that is not possible, we can have partnership with foreign institutions, so that when we train people here, they go there to take their exams. So, you would minimise costs. After learning, we do not have flagged ships to accommodate the cadets for their practical training.
Captain Adetayo Saliu (Chairman, Merchant Navy Shipping Zonal Council)
We have to get to the root of the matter before we can actually judge what happened between those cadets and NIMASA. My stand has always been that I don’t see why we need to take Cadets outside Nigeria to train, when we have nautical institutions here. All the money we are taking outside can be used to upgrade our institutions here in Nigeria and get them all the instruments and facilities for training. NIMASA should also look into the training of the existing officers to meet up with global best practice, to enable our seafarers to be marketable. The programme is good, but there is no need for going out.
