By Fortune Ulu
The plight of Nigerian seafarers, especially cadets and graduates of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron, in the process of securing sea time for practical experience took the front burner on Tuesday with a call for the declaration of a state of emergency on the issue.
Making the call at a media briefing in Apapa, Godfrey Bivbere, the Lead, 4 Circle Consult, and President of the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria (MARAN) said: “Unless urgent measures are taken by the Federal Government and, especially, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigeria will soon become a laughing stock in the global maritime industry.
“The neglect of seafarers after their academic work in pursuit of the sea time by the Nigerian government is forcing young Seafarers male and female, to go begging for sea time placement from foreign shipping lines and practitioners.”
He expressed deep concern that Nigerian cadets are presently all over the internet begging for sea time space because Nigeria has not been able to provide the opportunity for them.
He called on President Bola Tinubu to urgently step in and give urgent directives to redress the situation.
Bivbere said: “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must as a matter of urgency, direct the minister of Marine & Blue Economy and NIMASA to commerce record taking of all seafarers seeking sea time placement and also those who have completed their sea time and seeking employment; so that a database can be created to serve as ready pool of information and reference.
“The presidency must go further to ensure that the NIMASA Seafarers Data Warehouse is verifiable, dependable, reliable and valid to ensure that foreign bodies coming for them do not get substandard cadets.
“The second leg must be for the President to also direct NIMASA to create an enabling environment for Nigerians to own vessels, not just for the Cabotage environment but for global shipping business. It is disheartening that while other nations provide their cadets with quality identity cards, NIMASA issues Nigerian cadets identity cards printed on A4 paper.”
According to him, employers were rejecting Nigerian seafarers due to the lack of proper ID cards and unavailability of discharge book.
Expressing deep frustration over the situation, Bivbere further said: “Imagine a situation where a company comes along and wants to take Nigerians on a foreign vessel but NIMASA is unable to issue discharge book and the best they can offer is a temporary A4 paper.
“Whereas there are so many opportunities in the industry globally for Nigerian cadets, such opportunities never get to Nigeria owing to worries about our systemic corruption and thus, Nigeria is isolated from the global industry space.
“We go for conferences or International Maritime Organization (IMO) engagements and hardly make any meaningful contributions, good only at advancing theoretical and paper presentations without actionable blueprints and implementations.
“The problems are enormous but can be resolved with all hands on deck. Whereas National Seafarers Development Programme NSDP made meaning at its conception about two decades ago, the programme has lost content, ideals and innovation and is no longer a valid solution because a lot of the beneficiaries have ended up unemployed, rendering the expectation presently defective and unrealistic.”
He said, churning out cadets with far limited prospects for sea time training was defeatist in the circumstance that unavailability of training vessels had become a major disincentive.
According to him, under the circumstances, the best thing to do is to strengthen the Certificate of Competency (CoC) so that seafarers trained in Nigeria would be readily available for the international market, a better middle of the way solution.
He recalled that in the days of Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL) there was no scarcity of sea time training for Nigerian cadets.
“While we are not proposing government ownership of shipping lines, we are calling on government to put in place deliberate policy that will radically recreate and strengthen local shipping capacity where Nigerian ship owners can be empowered to participate in shipping trade and providing them window of guarantee for jobs that will enable them continue to operate and remain afloat as a national concern,” he advocated.
“When this national economic reality is in place, the problem of Nigeria seafarers going cap in hand to beg for sea time training overseas will be a thing of the past. The conditions of our cadets, thousands of whom are clearly stranded is heartrending as can be seen online.
“While our cadets are languishing and trying to fend for themselves, Egypt, Sri Lanka and South Africa are marketing their cadets to the global shipping world. More than a quarter of the world’s seafarers come from the Philippines. In 2019, an estimated 380,000 Filipino seafarers contributed $6.14 billion to the Philippine economy.”
Bivbere called on the leadership and management of NIMASA to take more than passing interest in the emasculation, illegal appropriation and confiscation of the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) put in place to revamp the indigenous shipping industry.
He said the time was ripe for the unravelling of the mystery surrounding the CVFF, challenging President Bola Tinubu to quickly approve the disbursement of CVFF and provide urgent remedy to recreate financial support to help ship owners begin the process of acquiring vessels.
