By Steve Agbota, [email protected]
“Well, it has been said that Nigeria invested so much in seafaring. The stand of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) and other stakeholders like us is that the Federal Government should bring back all liquidated vessels estimated at over 39 vessels.
“We have been sending our children for training both locally and overseas. But when they pass out of school, there is no employment. So the government should invest more on the ship]\\]\’’ping so as to resuscitate all the vessels that have been liquidated so that we can have our own indigenous shipping lines,”.
These are the words of the President General of MWUN, Comrade Adewale Adeyanju, at the 2nd annual seafarers’ colloquium in Lagos recently.
As a seafaring nation with huge economic benefits including foreign currency repatriation and employment creation, Nigeria has produced many seafarers.
But these professionals cannot compete favourably with their foreign counterparts due to some challenges. These challenges include rejection, lack of sea-time and Certificate of Competency (CoC) acceptance among others.
Recognising these challenges in 2009, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) launched the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP), an interventionist programme initiated to address the dearth of trained and certified seafarers in the maritime industry.
In spite of the massive investment made by the government, the nation’s seafarers are still facing the issue of marginalisation by local and foreign ship owners in preference for their counterparts in other countries with less qualification.
Daily Sun learnt that most of the seafarers are jobless and roaming the streets doing nothing due to a lack of indigenous vessels.
But according to Adeyanju, ethere are concerns over the continued rejection of Nigeria’s Certificate of Competency (CoC) by some flag states. He called on the relevant maritime agencies to gear up efforts at making Nigeria’s flag globally acceptable.
He charged NIMASA to equally invest more in getting vessels for those that have graduated from all those schools, saying the better they do it, the better for the country.
He adjudged that NIMASA has done so well by ways of sending so many of Nigerian cadets out of the country for proper training, adding that they need to do more to empower the trained seafarers.
He, therefore, accused the politicians of not paying attention to the nation’s maritime sector, saying that instead of them to invest in the nation’s maritime sector, they believe in spending it in another area.
“What stops them (politicians) from buying vessels for all those that have trained and been educated, certified captains and chief engineers who are roaming about the street. So, from the money they are taking out of this country, why can’t they use it to buy more vessels and bring back the shipping lines of yesterday,” he queried.
According to him, the politicians should not believe in winning elections all the time, they should think about the welfare of the people they are governing.
Meanwhile, the National President of Nigerian Merchant Navy Officers and Water Transport Senior Staff Association (NMNOWTSSA), Chief Bob Joseph Yousuo, has lamented that the association has been tackling the challenge of CoC for a very long time, adding that it has been a long dragging issue.
“We keep on every year, time to time; keep on pressing government, NIMASA to make sure the CoC issue is being resolved. It is just a matter of putting the right structure in our maritime institutions and have training vessels. International Maritime Organisation (IMO) will come to do an inspection and approve and say yes, we are due to have unlimited certificate like class one and two.
“What they are giving us is not unlimited and that has been hindering us and limiting us because most of the tickets we have with NCV. And apart from that, we are suppose to operate Cabotage regime because most of the vessels working here are Cabotage vessels and we do not have access to work on those vessels with our certificate because they felt the flag state doesn’t recognise our certificate,” he explained.
In order to tackle the menace, he opined that a serious government would let every vessel that is coming to its own country to make sure they recognise Nigerian certificate.
“We are not talking about international CoCs for unlimited for now. Let us talk about NCV we have. Even the NCV we have is giving us problems. So what we are telling the government and NIMASA is to have palliative agreements with more companies.
“It is not about sending politicians to go there and talk. Put professionals to engage these countries that own these vessels like Singaporean country and all those countries. Make palliative agreement with them, so that when they come to work here, they will be able to accept our certificate.
“Not that our people will be going to Ghana, Togo and smaller countries to get certificate because of the countries acceptability. It is hindering our young seafarers progress, and it is limiting them. I don’t know if our government is comfortable with it. Sending people abroad to go and get CoC is not the issue. Why can’t we do it here if Egypt is having unlimited certificate? Why can’t Nigeria do their unlimited certificate?” he asked.
“These things are causing a lot of problem for the country as well because when a seafarer doesn’t have a job, what do you expect him to do? When a cadet doesn’t have a vessel to go and work, what do you expect him to do? We are urging Federal Government and NIMASA to make sure they look into our problem in this country,” he bemoaned.
He said NIMASA send some people to abroad for unlimited certificate, when they come back, they will come and work on NCV vessels when they are supposed to go and work in foreign ongoing vessels.