Only credible shipowners should get loans – Olopoenia

Captain Adegboyega Olopoenia

Captain Adegboyega Olopoenia is the President of the Association of Master Mariners. He spoke with COMFORT OSEGHALE on the quality of maritime training in the country

Nigerian ship-owners have complained of their inability to access the cabotage fund. Why do you think this is so?

I don’t think it is a question of just accessing the fund. There must be a framework for accessing that fund. There is already a history of giving loans to Nigerianship owners; it was done before and at that time it was called the Nigerian Ship Association Fund. Not every ship owner paid back that fund; some didn’t. Some who collected that loan did not buy any vessel with it. Some did buy vessels but it was not commensurate with the amount that they were given. If the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency is going to give out loans, then it should be done properly. Our argument is that if you want to give loans, it should be given to credible ship operators. Not those who make noise in the press but those known to have been operating vessels even in the past 10 years. More than that, our own belief is that the act should be reviewed. It is over 10 years old and if you have been trying something for a decade and it is not working, you should accept something is wrong and try to review it rather than just passing the buck. Continue...

Has the absence of a national shipping line affected the development of the maritime education?

Yes, the situation is pathetic. For a decade now, there has been so much noise about Nigerian seafarers not growing in number. The current seafarers are aging rapidly. That was when NIMASA established the National Shipping Development Programme. That was supposed to be a partnership between NIMASA and the state governments. Even at that, it cannot solve the real problem that we have in the industry because what NIMASA is doing is just a palliative measure.

There are other issues related to the training; sending seafarers overseas for training is not enough. The key issue is that you must have where they can do practical training aboard ships. After your theoretical training at the college, you must have practical experience. We were trained on the NNSL, even before that, some Nigerians were trained on foreign going vessels. And in my case, I was trained on three foreign vessels.

Because the NNSL is no more available, when people go to the academy, there is no place for practical training. Even if they get it, the vessels are few. The worst is that we don’t have Nigerian vessels plying on international waters. Vessels owned by Nigerians are operating in the coastal area. So, today’s seafarers cannot get the requisite experience they need on international vessels.

Are you saying the seafarers graduating from the maritime academy are not fully trained?

There are three categories of seafarers; those who operate on the inland waters, navigating rivers and lakes, those who operate on the coastal waters and those who ply the high seas. Most seafarers being trained fall under the first two stages. This means their qualifications will not get them to the higher certificate stage like the master mariner level because they don’t have that exposure.

We don’t have so many master mariners in Nigeria. In our register, we are close to 200 but for a country of vast maritime endowments, that is not enough. We are just barely scratching the surface.

What is the way forward and how can we get to the level where we can send mariners to other countries?

There is a way out but we have to first of all certify them. Before you export a product, that product has to be a finished product. Let us say you have some seafarers from the academy, they are not finished products yet. You need to have a process in place for them to get the requisite sea time. It was done before and it can be done again. This association has presented to the Ministry of Transport a way forward for the industry. What we can do is to go into partnership with foreign vessels; there are many coming regularly into the Nigerian ports like the Maersk Line Group.

The government can approach these companies because it is also in the interest of these shipping lines that we should have sound maritime professionals in the country. If we don’t have qualified professionals to attend to these foreign ships when they come into the country, the ships can get into trouble. The government can ask these shipping lines to assist Nigeria by putting Nigerian cadets on board their vessels.

That is one way. The second way is to approach other countries around the world, sign an agreement with them and pay for the training to get our cadets on board their vessels. Ethiopia is a landlocked country, although it became so after the problem with Eritrea, they have a shipping line till date. Ethiopian seafarers are trained on board foreign vessels through partnership that Ethiopia has entered into with some companies. That is what is happening now in the world; Even though Ethiopia has its ships, they want to train more mariners so they can export mariners too. They are training mariners on foreign ships and when they are through, they can employ the Ethiopians on their vessels.

The amount of money Philippines make from exporting seafarers is enormous; it runs into millions of dollars annually. In our waters here, there are a lot of Filipinos working as seafarers. If we can get it right, all these people operating on our coasts can be replaced by qualified Nigerians. If we can prove that we have people to replace them, then we can think of exporting mariners to other countries; it will be a huge source of revenue. Unlike the Philippines, Nigerians have the advantage; we speak English well. So, we will do well on foreign ships.

Why do you think has Nigeria not been able to get the training of seafarers right?

The training of seafarers is a global problem and not just peculiar to Nigeria alone. There is a worldwide shortage of seafarers. The International Maritime Organisation many years ago had a ‘Go-to-sea’ campaign where they encouraged people to go to sea. However, if you are encouraging people to become seafarers, they must go to properly established maritime institutions and not mushroom colleges. The training of seafarers is based on international convention so that the training must follow what is contained in the convention of the IMO. The only institution in Nigeria that is recognised by the IMO to train seafarers in Nigeria is the academy at Oron. There are other training centres approved by NIMASA for short courses but not for the training of seafarers right form cadet to officer level. Meanwhile, Oron itself has its own limitations, because for a country of over 150 million people, if you are going to train seafarers, how many people can you take in a year? If you want to train seafarers, you cannot have 100 people in a class. The courses are those that require practical and if you have up to 100 students in a class, how can you attend to them properly? The ideal situation should be 25 to 30 people in a class. At the moment at Oron, there are more than 100 students in class. Aside from that, the academy needs more mariners as lecturers; they don’t have enough. The academy has to create an enabling environment for that because if the salary is not good enough, master mariners would not go there.

Getting practical training for the cadets is still an issue and the academy cannot do this on its own. They need the government and private sector to work together to address the issue. The more trained seafarers we have, the saver the port operations would be.

What does the training of a master mariner entail?

There are three stages of training a master mariner. The first stage is the cadetship period; it stretches over a four-year period; then you have the sea experience. Everything you have been taught in class will be put into practice on the sea. Lastly, there are professional exams you have to write; it is the certificate that determines your level of competency.

On average, it takes between nine and ten years from the time you start your cadetship to the time you get your master mariner certificate of competency. You cannot call yourself a captain until you can command a ship. The fact that you have a certificate does not mean you are a captain, it depends on the company. If a company wants to make you a captain, they can and if they don’t want, you cannot become a captain. You may have the certificate but they may not make you a captain. It is the certificate that makes you a master mariner; and it is the sea experience, when you are able to command a ship, that makes you a captain. You assume the rank of a captain on a ship. The qualification is different from the rank.

How were seafarers being trained soon after independence?

At that time, government agencies sponsored the training of seafarers unlike what happens now where individuals are training themselves. After independence, in the late sixties and seventies, the Nigerian National Shipping Line, the Federal Ministry of Transport, Inland Waterways Department, the Nigerian Ports Authority, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, would recruit young Nigerians and send them to Europe for training as seafarers. That continued until the NNSL was liquidated in the 1990s. That was when all the problems we are talking about in Nigeria started. Everybody just forgot about the training of seafarers. And there was a big gap. When the NNPC, NPA stopped, people started going to maritime colleges within and outside the country.