Nigerian Cadets are half- baked – Matthew Alalade 

He expresses fears  that the country may lose its edge as a maritime nation  as a result of inadequate training for graduate cadets.

Alalade posits that conducive environment be provided for seafarers in Nigeria to avoid mass exodus of the younger folks from the coast of Nigeria.

Excerpts.

Q. What’s your disposition to empowering and encouraging more women in seafaring?

A. My take on it is that empowering women is in recognition of women’s impact in maritime affairs and also in seafaring.

You know that we have only two percent of women in seafaring in the world. So, this year’s theme is targeted at encouraging them and also for the stakeholders to empower them by employing them onboard and avoid discrimination against them.

Also, there are lots of issues like culture, this debars people from employing ladies too. A ship owner told us one day that when a lady came to seek employment in his company, he asked them to keep her in the computer section but added that the lady came to meet him that she would not gain any experience at the computer room as an engineer.

And when the man gave her a chance, she performed well. The bias against the female should be dropped.

Culture plays a major role in what makes ship owners or employers to employ them but we must let them have a change of heart. There should be an orientation that women too can perform well.

If you try a female, you will see that they are cool headed and perform well because they know the task ahead.

The task ahead include turbulence at sea, discrimination and loneliness. So, their male counterparts should assist them in these areas. In fact, the female and male should marry one another because someone who is sailing  will be favourably disposed for the wife to go and do sea job.

The ship owners should change their mindset that women can’t perform well because in Ghana, there are female captains that are performing well.

We also have lady radio officers in Ghana. We have them in Nigeria too .

But they should employ them more. The government is saying they are going to employ 35 percent but they should  change the orientation of the stakeholders.

Q. Women are said to be sexually molested on-board vessels. So that factor seems to scare them away from sailing. What do you think government should do in this regard?

A. I don’t believe women are sexually harassed on board ships.

The women should keep to themselves anytime they sail. I don’t think that can stop them from taking up seafarers jobs.

Q. On the training of seafarers and dock workers as claimed by NIMASA on the seafarers day, how true is the claim and how many of your members were trained by the agency?

A. Through the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, we know they have trained some people but NIMASA has the statistics of the people they trained. I believe they must have done so because we have seen some female seafarers they brought from school but I want to urge nomads to train them up to higher level like Chief Engineers, not the leadership level alone and the stakeholders too.

During the time we were sailing, the stakeholders like the ship owners trained the officers too to Master level.

Q. Do they have the facilities to train the officers?

A. They can send them abroad for training. When I was sailing, they trained most of the people that are Chief Engineers now. In two year’s, they can train one or two of them, that is an impact. But nowadays, we don’t get the news that they train officers anymore.

Q. What are challenges that seafarers are facing right now in Nigeria that require urgent attention of the government?

A.  The challenge now is that seafarers don’t have favourable environment to work. Government should provide favourable environment for them to work.

Another thing is that if the ship owners get contracts, it will favour our members in that they will get jobs to do but without that, they will not get jobs to do.

NNPC is the job available now but they are giving it to foreign owned ships .

 Also, the government should put the ship owners on their toes to keep their vessels in class, they must encourage them to be in class.

If they don’t encourage them to keep their vessels in class, nobody will engage them and it will affect us. Government should see to that that they engage more surveyors to keep all these vessels in class like other countries. That is why you see that multi national companies engage other flag state vessels to operate on our waters.

Q. The present crop of engineers and mariners we have in Nigeria are aged people and nothing is being done to groom younger ones that will take over from them. What do you foresee in this development?

A. The Nigerian government or ministry of Transportation should endeavour to see that we have fleet for training and commercial purpose too.

We don’t have any fleet and we are saying we are the giant of Africa. If we have fleet, the training will be going on onboard up to officer, second engineer, chief engineer.

 Now we are just training cadets which are half baked and these cadets will struggle on their own and some of them will be lucky to go to other countries and are lucky to get themselves updated up to Master level.

 And when these boys get themselves updated, they don’t come back to this coast to work because their mindset will be that if they come back, what are they going to benefit. The salary is nothing to talk about, that is what they are thinking.

Q.  What do you think is going to happen by the vacuum that lack of adequate training is creating now?

A.  What will happen is that if there is no training and the vacuum persists for some years, you will see that Nigeria will have no maritime experts.

 May be they will be engaging foreigners to come and do maritime work. They will be contracting it to foreigners to do the job.

Look at what we call Coast Guard Now, Ministry of Transportation is engaging one Israeli company. We know our terrain, our coast, we can form a coastal guard within ourselves, why is it contracted to an Israeli firm?

Q.  What is the implication of foreigners taking up the job of Nigerians as a result of dearth of seafarers?

A. It means the Maritime sector is dying and it will take us back to the era of the 1950s and 1960s when we didn’t have maritime experts and the white people were doing the job for Nigerian government.

They will never tell the government the truth. I think it is better we have our own by filling this gap by having a national carrier to carry out goods and also train our people up to higher level.

I must be candid that the NSDP program is okay but government should take further step and acquire vessels and run by Public, Private Participation that it will be effective and be rest assured that the private operators don’t run at a loss.

Q. Recently, MWUN shut the port over failure of IOCs to pay dock workers wages. Do you support the move?

A, I support the strike. Mind You, before any strike will take place, they must have gone through the Ministry of Labour and Productivity, they must have been giving warnings.

No union can just stand up and declare a strike, it is a process. If the companies are defiant, they don’t want to give the workers their rights, I support it. Let the companies give the workers their rights that they are clamouring for.

Q. How do you intend to handle the issue of Cabotage before you leave office so that it would not become a burden on people that will take over from you?

A. I want you to note that seafaring job is an international job, you people are trading in other countries too and they term them as experts.

When I was sailing, I was in UK for some time and they termed me as an expert, it is a global thing.
I was in a meeting with  a Russian guy and Greek guy came and it was a Cabotage meeting early this year in Italy and these guys said should they go against the foreigners or they should share the dues.

So, we came with a resolution that there should be an understanding between the two unions. Now, we must get prepared to know their union there that they should pay some rebates to Nigerian union if they are operating here.

If we say it should be an eye for an eye which NIMASA has tried but we have seen that there is no-one to replace the foreigners here.

Our training institutions have not been upgraded to higher level to be able to issue our CoCs that will accommodate all cadre of people onboard.

So, we must tread softly over this Cabotage of a thing. We can say they should give them waivers up to Captain level but we should upgrade our schools too. If not, ship owners May get contracts but there won’t be people to execute the contracts for them except they look further to the seafarers abroad.