‘With NNPC, Cadets Shouldn’t Have Problem Securing Sea Time Training’ Umoren

Secretary General of the Abuja MoU, Captain Sunday Umoren, weekend, lent his voice to the protracted problems of sea time training for Nigerian cadets, due to lack of a training ship, saying the ownership of a training ship is not essential to achieving mandatory sea time training for cadets.

Interestingly, unlike the popular demand for the purchase of a training ship to solve the challenge, Umoren choose a lone causeway, arguing that ownership of a training ship by the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN) is not an absolute requirement.

The Abuja MoU chief scribe said a change in Nigeria trade policy from FOB to CIF or making the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) adjust its trading agreements with crude cargo ships to take cadets onboard, suffice to resolve the over two decades pending problem of sea time training.

BY EGUONO ODJEGBA

Despite that we pride ourselves as a maritime nation, the federal government sole Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN) have been without a training ship, a situation that has made majority of its students and cadets unable to secure the mandatory sea time training as part of the cadets completion course  programme. Stranded products of the Academy turn out as Okada riders and menial jobs seekers with some going into economic crimes. While the Nigeria College of Aviation (NCA) has several training aero planes for its trainee pilots, MAN has no single training ship for its cadets, dwarfing and distorting the Academy’s soaring status. What is the way out?

Sometimes I find myself standing alone. It is not compulsory for an academy to have a training ship, it is not an absolute requirement. However, it also depends on the strategy or options open to the nation and the academy. If the model they want to pursue is the training vessel model, excellent. Training vessel is not cheap to maintain, so the academy will need the support of the government to maintain a training ship. And often the way we are running, your training on the ship alone is not enough. You still need at least three months and for 12 months sometimes, depending on the strategy. So you could say nine months on the training ship and three months on a trading…trading as in a vessel that is on commercial voyage. So yes, a training vessel will help us to a certain extent, but it depends on the model. But for us to make conscious efforts to see how we can get these cadets on a trading vessel, there are lots of models…we can explore options available to us. Look at NNPC, we are blessed with crude oil, let the government consider a change in the contract agreement NNPC that deals with crude buyers. It could be compulsory as a clause that for every vessel you nominate, it must have two or three Nigerian cadets on board.

But is the NNPC willing to do this?

I don’t know if it is willing and that’s why I say it’s a national thing. If Nigeria has it as a rule, as a law, part of the agreement, why not. It can be negotiated. I’ve seen it work in other countries it was happening with Iranian bulk tankers, you see their cadets filling the ship. So you put this down that way, depending on the CIF contract for the carriage of cargo…almost all the vessels here are same model and insist this vessel should have this number of cadets.

So you think the best approach is to negotiate an agreeable option, right?

So like I said, it depends on the strategy they are pursuing. Is government negotiating its contract with lifters of our cargo as part of the agreement to have our cadets onboard? The buyers have no choice, so federal government needs to come in there and tell the NNPC, hey, hey, this is the course we want in all official agreements. And the next thing, almost half of the cadets will have a place to go for their sea time. People have been shouting, telling our regulators to move from FOB to CIF, and that will even give them an opportunity because they could pick up the competent ones to work with them.

Is that how it is in other maritime nations?

Ghana does not have a training vessel but they are not having problems with their cadets. They go out there scouting for places, looking for companies to work with for placement for their cadets. So we need to have a new paradigm shift. If we are agreeing on a training vessel we can but it’s not just about buying a training vessel and leaving it there as an ornament. If you’re gonna buy a vessel, that’s fine, we can buy, but all the stakeholders must be involved. We must be willing to keep that vessel going. So that’s my position.

In the next four, five years, what is your projection for the Academy?

For me and from the perspective of the Abuja MoU, I can only see the best part of it.  As an ex-cadet and as the Secretary General of the Abuja MoU, we have also brought an opportunity to the Academy. We’ll be signing an agreement for them to be training our port control officers. So I’m looking at, you know, there’s always the fresh blood, a new officer coming in now. Commodore Effedua did excellently very well, he recreated the place and set up a very wonderful foundation. And when you have foundation, it’s so easy for you to build on the foundation… for certain things a lot goes into foundation and a lot goes into the building up after the foundation.

For the new regime, Dr. Okonna, I know him, he is team player, he is a man that has worked with a lot of people. You know…he works so easily with people, people are very comfortable around him. For him to now harness those contacts, those relationship he has and move the academy to the next level. Locally, he’s been highly exposed, he’s been attending a lot of programs at the IMO, so he’s fully armed. It’s fully armed. It’s for us to run around him to give him the support to do his best. I love the way he’s already engaging people to ask for support, to ask for their contributions, suggestions on how to move the place forward. So it is for us to do that and probably for the ministry now to say hey, for every six months, give us progress report, let’s see your plan for short term and long term and then, and then be giving us an update on those programs.

And then things will work, people like us out there are ready to support as much as we can to ensure that the place works, because we need to have the next generation of seafarers, fully equipped. Because even this exporting of seafarers, if we don’t have a fully trained, having their practical experience on training vessels, not just you’re training somebody for foreign going and it’s having sea training on local vessels. If we have people that are well trained, active seafarers can easily be exported. We were exported because we were working on the defunct Nigerian National Shipping Line, we had that international exposure and so when the Nigerian National Shipping Line went down we were able to go out so easily, working in Singapore and Iran and everywhere. But now the new crops are struggling because that training is not really available, that perspective is lacking. So we need to work to resolve these issues and the sky will be our limit.