The President, Centre for Marine Surveyors Nigeria, Prince Adebambo Ademiluyi has described the Nigerian Maritime sector as being stagnant in the last one year.
Ademiluyi who made this known in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos said there was nothing spectacular that occurred in the sector that could be described as a major achievement in the industry in the year 2015.
He stated that the development could be attributed to vacuum in the leadership of the Ministry of Transport most of the year saying that the out gone Minister of Transport was inactive from March 2015 while the new one came onboard last October which he said had a negative impact in the industry.
Ademiluyi who is also the Chairman of Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Centre however hoped that the current Minister of Transportation, Hon. Chibuike Amaechi should hit the ground running so as to catch up with the activities that was missed in the last one year especially coming up with a policy that would drive the maritime sector in the new year.
According to him,” Well, the maritime sector in my opinion last year was very stagnant; we can’t really say that there was anything spectacular that happened in the year that you can say was a major achievement. Possibly you can ascribe that to the fact that there was a vacuum in the leadership of the Ministry of Transport for most of the year. The previous Minister was inactive from about March and there was no substantive Minister until about October.
“So, really, I can’t see what we achieved as a sector as a whole in the whole of last year and I am hoping that this year, the new Minister will hit the ground running and try and catch up on some of the activities that should have happened last year especially coming up with a policy that will drive the sector in the right direction in the new year. Right now, I have not seen a policy that will drive”.
On the achievement of the Centre in the last one year, he said, “Well, the Centre in the last one year was able to achieve some level of membership growth which was measured and it was like that because we careful not to take just anybody that came along. We wanted to make sure that we have a foundation that is solid and members and will be future members will be members that you will be able to vouch for, that their companies have the integrity that is commensurate with our objectives that we want to achieve.
“We also had a lot of activities that were quite useful to the growth of the Centre, the main one was of course, the Public Lecture which we had and we hope we will be able to achieve another public lecture in a bigger manner this year and at the tail end of the year, the major achievement that we had was the fact that IIMS, at their Board meeting in December approved Nigeria as a branch of IIMS which put a branch status on Nigeria and as such we are trying to make sure that all marine surveyors come together in one body to make use and take advantage of these achievements especially in the area of capacity building, training and networking with an international body, with other international companies that are members of IIMS, that is the International Institute of Marine Surveyors”.
He hinted that the Centre would conduct workshops that were tended towards areas where they need to get solutions and that there would be training and re-training of members of the Centre this year.
He said,” That is what we want to concentrate on this year and with the training, we hope to expand our membership base. We also walk backwards to go to all schools where marine studies is carried out because we want to be able to catch them young, we want to be able to catch the students and be able to tell them about marine surveying and expose them to the opportunities that are there.
“And so, hopefully, by the time they come out of school, we will be able to have some of them as mentees in the various companies so that we will be able to teach them and grow them into proper marine surveyors. That has been absent in our clime probably that’s the reason we have so many quacks who just come out from school, some don’t even come out properly from school, they will just carry a briefcase and go on a vessel and they allow them onboard and in a space of three voyages, he starts to call himself a marine surveyor.
“So, if we catch them young, if we go back to school we will be able to catch them young, we can mentor them properly and start doing certification for them now that we have affiliation with a certification body, we can start doing such things to make sure that they are properly certified and trained”.
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