Mr. Chigozie Chikere is the Rector, EMDEE Shipping and Maritime College, Lagos. In this interview with our correspondent, he bares his mind on the recent list of accredited Maritime Training institutions recognized by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) , the Maritime manpower training, Apapa gridlock and so much more. Excerpts;
There was a Marine Notice issued by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) where it released names of the institutions it accredited to run Maritime training in line with Standards of Training, Certification and Watch keeping (STCW ’95) saying that it would not recognize any certificate issued by any other Maritime training institutes apart from the ones it mentioned on the list. Your institution, EMDEE Shipping and Maritime College was found missing on the said list. What do you have to say about that?
Actually, if NIMASA was doing that kind of assessment, we are supposed to get their appraisal form where they will spell out their criteria for assessment because such assessment, you don’t stay in the office and do it. You know, draw up criteria, when you draw up your criteria, you give them to those institutions, let them give you information based on exactly what you want. We never saw anything like that.
Maybe, the assessment was done before we came on board because we are not up to one year old. We came on board sometime late last year. If they had done it now, we would have gotten wind of that, they would have send their assessment team or they would have send us a form to fill based on the information that they will need to rate us. It is because we didn’t see it, that is why am saying that maybe they did it before we came on board.
According to you, you have not been up to a year since you started training in maritime related courses. If I may ask, under what law or statute are you operating as a training institution in Nigeria?
We have the NBTE (National Board for Technical Education) license, that is the board that regulates both the Polytechnic and Monotechnic education in Nigeria. We also have the approval of the Federal Ministry of Education.
So, When we came on board, nobody told us that NIMASA has a hand in what we are doing and if NIMASA is a regulatory body for Maritime education, they never made it known. They should have been inculcated in the NBTE requirements for accreditation so that before they issue out license, you would have satisfied NIMASA’s requirements.
It is because there was no such thing, we felt that we merited the license and that we are qualified to run the programmes that we runing.
Now that you are aware that NIMASA has a role to play in what you are doing, are you going to look for them or would you still wait until they approach you?
How it is done is that, NIMASA on their own should set up a committee that in in-charge of this accreditation. When they set up the committee, they write letters to the institutions because they know the institutions, then when they write the letter, they will now give us a date when they will come. When they come, they are supposed to meet us the way we are. That is how it is done.
Then, if there is anything else they want, they now tell us after their inspection or in their letter, they will let us know the standards that they expect from us so that we build up before they arrive.
We are not the ones to look for them, they should look for us. We know that we are meeting up with the standards that NBTE gave us and the one the Federal Ministry of Education gave us.
We are still running other programmes like the CRFFN (Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria ) programme, they came for accreditation and they gave us license. So, we did not start looking for all these people, they knew that we are here because all of them are doing the same thing.
NIMASA is there as the Maritime Administration and safety agency, we are developing maritime manpower, so we are in the same industry. But since they are the ones setting the standards, they are the ones that should let the training institutions to know what their standards are.
If we are to look for them, we would have met them at the NBTE when we were asking for license. NIMASA’s requirements should have been there for us to meet before NBTE license but because their own wasn’t there, it showed that NIMASA’s own is secondary and they are now supposed to meet the institutions that are on ground.
Since the issuance of the Marine Notice by NIMASA, have you not been getting some questions or inquiries from people on your reason for not being found on the list?
One radio reporter from the 103.5 Fm, the Maritime Platform, he was the first person that asked me that question and I told him that as far as am concerned, NIMASA never came here to ask us any question. There is no other place they can get information about us except here because if they go to NBTE or to the federal Ministry of Education, they will tell them that they know about us. If they go to CRFFN, they will tell them that they know about us. I don’t know where they got their information that they used to assess institutions except when they come to the institutions and ask questions.
What level of training are you offering here?
We are giving them the basic training in shipping management. The Certificate will enable them to launch into the industry and explore other areas of specialization.
This is a one department college. We award OND in shipping Management. With that, they can enter the industry and explore the industry and find an entry point and now decide which area of the maritime sector to specialize in, if it is seafaring, you know there is need for further training. You know there is a specialized institution for that, if they are going for Marine engineering, there are specialized institutions for that.
But here, you know these are people who have flair for maritime studies. So, what we are providing them is an avenue for them to pursue their goal in the maritime sector. With the OND that they will get, it will really fire their zeal to seek out other opportunities in the sector.
This OND that you are talking about, what is the duration?
It is a two year programme, just like what is obtainable in the conventional Polytechnic or any other institution offering OND programme in Nigeria.
It seems that the knowledge of the Maritime studies is common with the students in the coastal areas with little or no knowledge for students in the hinterlands. What avenues are you exploring to get other students who are not living in any of the coastal states but who may have keen interest in pursuing a career in the maritime sector to fulfill their dreams?
Well, education is expected to be functional, where you determine the kind of education that you choose or aspire. You know, like the people in Lagos are enjoying the privilege that they have as a state that is hosting maritime institutions because Lagos is a coastal state just like other states of Delta, Rivers and the rest.
So, people living in those areas will be much more aware of what is obtainable in the maritime sector that the ones in the hinterland. Those ones will know more, when you talk about transport, they will know more about the rail, they will know more about road transport.
But if for any reason any of them know about the maritime and he is interested, there is no limit to how far he can go. The information is online, if they check JAMB brochure, our school is there. We advertise our College on radio and on every media of communication.
So, it is very easy for them to know what is happening. The distance should not be a barrier because I know people travel from here to Europe, United States to acquire education, nothing presents somebody that is in Nigeria to come to study in Lagos or in any other institutions. There is one in Oron, MAN (Maritime Academy of Nigeria) is there, there is one in Delta State, even the Nigerian Maritime university that you mentioned.
As you can see, it is spreading along the coastal states. So, people who are living far from the coastal areas but they are interested, they will get information in good time and I don’t think there is any limit.
What is your assessment of the shipping sector in the last seven months?
What I know is that the shipping sector is doing well beginning from the time of concessioning in 2006. The industry has been improving, Nigeria is gaining more in terms of the volume of trade.
But where the problem is is the capacity of the ports to handle the cargo throughput. The cargo throughput is so high for those terminals to handle. If you go there, you will find out that they keep stacking containers, most times, you see a vessel waiting to berth.
If a terminal is able to handle only two vessels, you find out that other vessels will be queuing, invariably, the size of the terminal is too small to accommodate the volume of trade that is coming in to the country through the terminals.
The Service charges which the terminal operators are imposing on importers and their agents are too high. Again, you see them accusing the agents or accusing the crowd of pilferage or things like that. Customs raiding them, that is not fair because you find out that they mention things like under-declaration, now who is doing the under-declaration? Is it the agents that are doing it? Even if it the agents that are doing it, who is assisting them? Who is aiding them to cut corners? It is still the terminal operators that are working with those agents to defraud the government.
At the end of the day, you see the Customs’ Federal Operations Unit arresting containers that has been released by their colleagues in the ports making the importers, the agents and the truckers scape goats. This issue of cutting corners is another problem.
You talked about vessels queuing up in the seaports awaiting discharge, I recall that the Nigerian Ports Authority has said that the waiting time of vessels in the nation’s seaports had drastically reduced. Are you not contradicting that claim by your statement?
They said it has reduced but it has not been eradicated. They should work towards the world’s best standards. Telling us that it has reduced doesn’t make any difference, what we want to see is that they are working with minimum cost.
One of the terminal operators, APMT to be precise, claimed that the terminal is large enough to accommodate twice what it currently takes as cargo throughput thus contradicting your statement that the terminals are too small to accommodate the volume of cargo that comes into the country. How would you justify that position?
They are not saying the truth because, if you want to know, ask the agents. When they have take delivery of containers and they are coming back to return them, they keep waiting. That is why you see this long queue on this roads because they cannot enter, they will have to wait.If there is space, why can’t they allow them to go in? Instead, they divert them to another place since they could not drop the containers.
APMT said that they operate a truck schedule, that when a truck comes in to load container and when it returns the empty container to terminal. They also said that the empty containers they are allowed inside the terminal are those ones ready for shipment. That if you are not scheduled to return the empty containers the day that you are bringing it, you will not be allowed access into the port. What is your take on that?
They are not being fair to the truckers if this is what they are saying because a trucker will load from the terminal and go to his destination, now, by the time he gets there, they need to unstock the container for him to return it and load again.
If they should give the truckers two days, who is paying for the two days? If they should give him five days, who will pay for it? Because the truck will be there doing nothing and remember what we know about wear and tear situation.
So, the owner will continue to suffer loss because the terminal is not efficient? If they said they have excess capacity, why are they now scheduling containers? They are just managing the space, they can claim that they are experts in Managing space but not that there is enough space.
In that case, you are saying that they should have created a holding bay for empty containers instead of scheduling trucks?
Thank you! So that the truckers can drop the empty containers and go ahead with their businesses. These trucks don’t belong to the government, they belong to individuals who must make their on daily basis. When the truck is there, when the truck leaves there and get to its destination, they are working with time, for them to unstuff and come back and load again because the owner of the truck has given the man a target per week. So, for him to meet up with that target, must have loaded up to four or five times per week.And they are saying he should incur loss because they are running a schedule. It is not right. If they must run a schedule, let them provide their own trucks.
It has been said that bad roads and the lack of truck terminal were responsible for the traffic gridlock being experienced at Apapa lately. Do you agree with that? If not, what are other factors responsible for the gridlock from your own perspective?
Bad road is contributing but it not contributing much. I see it as the immediate cause, there are some remote causes.
Now, also look at the Tincan Island Port, a port as large as that, it is Nigeria’s second largest port and yet, there is no rail system that entered that port. It means that government want that port to depend solely on trucks for movement of containers in and out of the port.
There is no rail track that entered the Tincan Island port, it stopped at Apapa. Now, Considering the volume of trade that enters Nigeria through Tincan, consider the number of trucks that will be able to handle the number of cargoes that are coming in and now compare it with the roads. Don’t forget that the trucks are competing with other road users.
Nigerians travel mostly on private vehicles because trains are not available and public transport like the BRT (Bus Rapid transport) that came of late cannot come here because of the traffic gridlock. So, these are the causes.
Again, the tank farms, everybody is talking about the tank farms because the tank farms were sited in Apapa without considering the space where tankers will park. They just thought about having tank farms. Yes, the tank farms depend on the sea for them to offload their commodities but they don’t consider that the cargoes do not go through pipeline, tankers will come to convey them to their various destinations, there is no arrangement for where those tankers will park.
And again, the tankers don’t belong to the oil marketers, it belongs to the private individuals who can only afford a tanker but cannot afford a space for parking. So, many of them park them there and leave them there after all nobody is checking, they just park them there and go away. So, this is another area government should look into.
The VIO (Vehicle inspection Officers) should be up and doing. Of course I know that sometimes, they come into the ports and demobilize vehicles that are occupying spaces, that is the work of VIO in Abuja and it should be their job here. They should make sure that any tanker that does not have driver available or is not on queue or have not been scheduled to load, that tanker should be impounded, even the owner should be arrested because unless they go hard on them, they will continue to create traffic gridlock in Apapa.
Then, the road rehabilitation has been so slow, it showed that nobody is monitoring them. They said they gave them sixteen months to complete the second phase, the sixteen months, whether it has expired now or not, nobody knows but I a sure that the sixteen months will expire and the job will still be undone.
The tanker park that they are constructing, they said it will span from the Liverpool bridge to Coconut bus stop, up till now that tanker park has not passed the Tincan first gate. That one too is very slow.
So the government really said that they are working, we have seen that they are working because they have awarded the contracts but they are not giving proper monitoring to ensure that hose projects are completed in record time.
Looking at this industry, we have two key factors, that is, capacity building and infrastructure. Of these two, which one of them do you think is more pressing to the sector presently?
Infrastructure is more pressing because if you build capacity and you have no where to accommodate them, it will still boil down to having achieved nothing. Infrastructure is needed. If Nigeria should develop more ports, there will be need for manpower.
Most people train on the job, infact, the easiest way to train is on the job as long as they have people who will pilot the affairs. It is just like what is happening in the education sector, the Universities are rolling out graduates every year without any place to absorb them. That is one of the things that are responsible for the rise in terrorism, militancy and the things like that because of people who were trained but they are jobless.
So, building capacity should come later when the infrastructure has been put in place, proper infrastructure, the ones that are needed.
