Chairman of Tarzan Jetty and Boat Services Ganiyu Sekoni Balogun, recently led a delegation of the organised boat transport operators in Lagos and Ogun States to the Naval Dockyard Limited, Wilmot Point, Victoria Island, Lagos for an on-the-ground assessment of some home made boats and vessels by the Naval Dockyard team.
Deputy General Manager Plans, Captain Bolaji Orederu, said that the expertise of the Naval Dockyard with regards to building vessels of different specifications of boats has spurred it to do more business to meet the demands of commercial users.
“We need to start developing indigenous technology that rely solely on foreign technology to power our economy; after all Rome was not built in a day and that is the reason we must start making our expertise in the boat building boat works for us,” Orederu said.
“We have the capacity not just to build boat, but building high quality vessels and boats and some of our works have passed different quality control test.
“One of the landmarks recorded at the Naval Dockyard was the building of the first war ship by the naval team at the dockyard and the second one which is bigger than the first is underway,” he said.
Orederu revealed that the Naval Dockyard Limited acquired the latest AutoCAD software for different designs to compliment the building skills and expertise of the workforce.
He said: “Since we do not have skilled man-power with AutoCAD experience, we decided to invite an expert from Italy to train our crop of workforce on the dynamic trend and how to use it in the design of boat, ship, vessel among other marine equipment.”
On his part, Navy Commodore Ubah Basil Agala said since the Naval Dockyard is run as a limited liability venture driven by target and profit.
“In this regard, we need to look for a sector that shares our dream in terms of demand for our supply chain to be more effective and the organised boat operators’ fall into this area of interest, which geared the meeting today,” Agala said.
Balogun was optimistic that the partnership between the Naval Dockyard and boat will yield positive result.
“We believed that by the time our members are given feedback of today’s meeting, the next visit to the dockyard would be to finalise arrangement on the partnership,” Balogun said.
Balogun who is also an experienced boat builder said that Nigeria is coming to terms with the reality of the tourism industry, and commended the Naval Team for it dynamism in the boat building.
“If every unit of the industry has a home based manufacturing or building plant(s) it would reduce the cost of going outside Nigeria to buy or order boats and spare parts at high rates,” he added.
Balogun also noted that as the boat operators in Lagos, Ogun and surrounding states are satisfied with quality and standard of boats and vessels built by the Naval Dockyard, its partnership with the Naval Dockyard will thrive.
“On the other hand, we can also give them specifications of what we want and at the same time, get involved in the supervision of the fabrication and building process for quality control and certification,” Balogun added.
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