The Commandant, Nigerian Navy Hydrographic School, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Commodore Sunday Daniel Atakpa, has been awarded a Certificate of Excellence by the KoGuan Law School of Shanghai Jioa Tong University (SJTU) for being the most outstanding and most innovative participant at a training in deep-sea mining under the international Seabed Authority (ISA) endowment funding.
The award was conferred on Commodore Atakpa on July 12 after his outstanding work on the application of deep-sea mining to the blue economy.
The KoGuan Law School of Shanghai Jiao Tong University is one of China’s largest, oldest and leading law schools. KoGuan Law, as it is popularly called, is located on the Xuhui campus, in the center of China’s business and financial capital, Shanghai.
Commodore Atakpa was one of 14 participants at the two-week deep-sea mining training drawn from different countries. Majority of the participants were PhD holders and experts.
The SJTU was ranked the 5th and 7th best university in China in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
Commodore Atakpa has won several local and international awards in the past. In August 2016, he emerged as the Best Oralist in the Moot Court Competition during the summer course at the International Tribunal for the Law of Sea (ITLOS) in Hamburg, Germany. The programme was hosted by the International Foundation for the Law of the Seas (IFLOS).
It was the first time in the history of the tribunal that a non-lawyer won the award. It was also the first time an African and a military personnel would win the award.