A former Director at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Captain Kunle Olayiwola, has said that the agency’s Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) has become tool for promoting nepotism and tribalism.
The NSDP was created by NIMASA in 2008 with the mandate to train Nigerian youths to become seafarers and naval architects. The programme was designed to train beneficiaries up to degree level in Marine Engineering, Nautical Sciences and Naval Architecture in maritime training institutions abroad and to position them to compete effectively in the global maritime industry.
Speaking during a meeting organised by the Nigerian Shipowners Association (NISA) in Apapa, Lagos on Thursday, the former NIMASA Zonal Coordinator and Head of Enforcement/Monitoring Unit said past heads of the agency used the NSDP programme to favour only their cronies and tribesmen to the detriment of the seafaring profession.
He said most of the NADP beneficiaries did not have genuine desire to become seafarers but were only interested in travelling abroad on government tickets and collecting estacodes.
He also said that those who manage to complete the programme have no ships to work on.
Some of the NSDP seafarers, according to the Master Mariner, have been roaming the streets for the past eight years due to their inability to conclude their trading by acquiring sea-going experience.
“What seafarers have passed through in the last ten years is the worst ever in the history of training of seafarers,” he said.
Olayiwola said to save the country from wasting hard earned foreign exchange, NSDP cadets should henceforth be trained at the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN) Oron, Akwa Ibom State and at the Nigerian Maritime University in Delta State.