Nigerian Cadets and Seatime Experience

In 2008, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) under its then Director-General, Dr Ade Dosunmu, conceived an interventionist programme to bridge the gap in the dearth of seafarers in the country.

Thus berthed the National Seafarers Development

Programme (NSDP) meant to empower Nigerian youths to embrace seafaring as a professional in a bid to shore up the fast depleting numbers of qualified seafarers in the country.

The proponents of the programme were driven by genuine desire to replace the ageing seafarers who cut their teeth in the lucrative field during the golden era of Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL) in the 90s.

As a result, young Nigerians with prerequisite qualifications were sent to reputable maritime institutions in the Philippines, India, Egypt, Romania and United Kingdom to learn the rudiments of seafaring.

However, that was as far as what the programme could achieve, a theoretical framework of seafaring, because 10 years down the line, it has been tales of woes from the beneficiaries of the programme.

The 2,500 Nigerians said to have so far benefitted from the programme were mere paper tigers who lack the mandatory practical sea time experience.

Out of the 2,500 beneficiaries, we understand a little above 1,500 of them have graduated so far from different foreign maritime institutions while less than 10 per cent of these numbers actually got the mandatory sea time experience.

The nigeriamaritime360.com is gravely disturbed by this development.

Our anxiety is premised on the fact that the fulcrum of seafaring is seatime experience. No cadet can go on board a vessel to work as a seafarer until he acquires seatime experience.

And to acquire a seatime experience, you must be trained in the practical aspects of seafaring on board a vessel.

Some of the so- called NSDP graduates have not even seen how a vessel looks like beyond the diagrams shown them inside the classrooms.

We are bewildered to learn that the large majority of these graduates lack seatime experience. But this realisation is in direct conflict with the claims of NIMASA’s management that it has secured seatime trainings for the NSDP graduates.

Dakuku Peterside, the incumbent helmsman at NIMASA had on several occasions claimed at different fora that the agency had reached an understanding with friendly foreign organisations to offer their platforms for seatime training for the cadets.

Specifically, Dakuku promised in December 2017, that about 289 cadets would be given seatime training on ocean-going vessels between December 2017 and January, 2018.

According to him, 200 of these numbers would be sent to Egypt while the remaining 89 would be sent to UK.

However, on September 24th, 2018, a group of frustrated but exasperated NSDP graduates cordoned off the Burma Road Headquarters of the NIMASA to protest what they called the neglect and delay of the agency to send them for seatime training.

Similarly, a year earlier, September 2017, a group of NSDP graduates under the aegis of the Coalition of International Maritime Graduates of Nigeria (CIMAGRAN) make a similar plea to the agency to send them for the mandatory seatime training.

We are more concerned than amused by these two similar scenarios due to their implications.

Apart from the fact that it exposes the insincerity of NIMASA’s management over the issue, it also, more sadly, unearthed the rot in the programme as well as the frustration of the cadets.

We are amazed why such interventionist programme as NSDP meant to empower Nigerian youths to be qualified seafarers will overlook such important component as seatime training which is the main essence of that concept that would equip our cadets with requisite experience and transform them into robust, full- fledged and qualified seafarers.

We are tempted to assume that the programme, as laudable and expedient as it is, was designed to fail and produce unqualified and unemployable sea men and women.

We are however comforted by the realisation that the present management of NIMASA under Dakuku Peterside has come to recognise the futility of the programme without seatime experience for the cadets through his promises to place them on board of vessels to acquire the necessary practical knowledge of seafaring.

We therefore urge the agency to display urgent sense of sincerity and commitment towards availing all the beneficiaries of the programme the mandatory seatime experience.

We frown at the present arrangement of NIMASA in its quest to secure seatime training for these cadets without involvement of indigenous ships operators.

We are not comfortable with the lack of interest displayed by the NIMASA management towards the Cadetship Training Scheme(CTS) idea enunciated and presented to the agency by the Ship Owners Association of Nigeria(SOAN) meant to provide about 400 training berths on a sustainable roll-over basis on SOAN members.

It is our belief that if the agency could collaborate with the local ship operators who have shown willingness despite their numerous challenges to help our hapless cadets and augment this with the foreign arrangement, more NSDP graduates will be placed on vessels for their sea-time training experience.

With the present arrangement, there will be more delays in securing the seatime experience and this will further aggravate the anxiety of the NSDP graduates who are roaming the streets, jobless.

Our worries are deepened by the undeniable fact that the more delays these cadets experience in getting the seatime training, the higher the risk they will constitute to our maritime environment.

Majority of them are now jobless and could be willing tools to perpetrate maritime crime.

An idle mind is a fertile ground for evil machinations.

Similarly, an idle hand is devil’s workshop.

It is even being insinuated that there are chances that not a few of these jobless cadets are involved in some of the security infractions being witnessed on our waters.

Sadly, the cadets will remain jobless and unemployable as long as NIMASA plays to the gallery over the issue of their seatime experience.

Equally, the dream of the proponents of this loft programme to replace our ageing seafarers with young, vibrant and qualified ones would remain unfulfilled if NIMASA does not adopt a robust and proactive approach towards salvaging the situation.

What seatime experience is to a Cadet is what house internship is to a graduate of medicine as well as Nigeria Law School is to a law graduate.

A graduate of medicine who does not undergo house internship where he gets the practical experience of what he learned at the university would have wasted his seven years studying medicine because no employer will engage him as a doctor.

Same goes for a Law graduate who fails to attend the one- year mandatory tutorials at Law school.

Before a cadet could earn full certification, licensing, qualifications and called seafarer in global maritime industry, he must get the mandatory sea time experience.

This platform therefore appeals to the government through NIMASA not to turn our cadets into paper tigers due to lack of practical experience of the workings on board vessels.