Nigeria, through the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), has been been urged to do more in its seafarers’ development program by marketing Nigerian seafarers and signing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with major maritime nations for gainful employment.
Making the charge in
in a paper presented at the 2024 Lecture Series of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria Oron, titled: “Addressing Human and Institutional Capacity Development in Nigeria’s Maritime Sector Through Stakeholders Partnership, a maritime expert, Capt Konni Duniya, stressed that this is necessary in order
to avoid a shortfall of ninety- six thousand Seafarers in Nigeria’s Maritime sector in the year 2026.
Her concern stemmed from the huge shortage of adequate and competent seafarers Nigeria may experienced in the coming years if the manpower gap created as a result of war, retirement and disruptions in the sector
Is not urgently addressed.
Duniya, an alumna of the premier maritime institution, identified factors inhibiting employment opportunities for Nigerian seafarers as; *Domination of Nigeria’s Maritime sector by seafarers of foreign countries;
*Issuance of fraudulent Certificate of Competency CoC;
*Lack of database to validate cadet’s education, training and experience; and
*Non-compliance with STCW Convention of International Maritime Organization.
To address this issue, she enjoined the Federal Government to organise frequent training for existing seafarers and develop capacity building programs for incoming ones with the use of emerging trends and technologies.
Duniya decried the situation where Nigeria has been on the IMO STCW white list since 2019 while her seaferers are yet to benefit from this achievement due to the inability of Nigeria to sign MoU with the most respected countries like UK, Australia and most of Europe.
According to her, signing MoU with such countries will help strengthen Nigeria’s image as a serious maritime nation and open doors for employment of Nigerian seafarers globally.
She lamented that Nigeria is the only country with unemployed seafarers in the world despite the cabotage law which seems to have been poorly implemented while there’s shortage of seafarers globally.
She called for proper housekeeping in NIMASA to combat issues of sea time and licence forgery through the use of block chain and cloud computing.
In her words: “There is the need for Nigeria to market her seafarers to the global market alongside the signing of MOU like Ghana, South Africa and other countries are doing.
“Nigeria seafarers are left to their fate battling poor wages, welfare and living conditions within Nigerian waters while alternatively accepting lower positions outside Nigerian waters which does not give room for consistent career growth”.
While saying that Maritime Academy of Nigeria is currently positioned to compete globally in terms of standards, she urged the government to provide the enabling environment for the school to achieve the aims and objectives of its establishment as it relates to Seafarers’ training and licence issuing.