President, Centre for Marine Surveyors Nigeria, Prince Adebambo Ademiluyi has said that the preference of Nigerians for foreign companies as against the indigenous ones was not as a result of lack of indigenous capacity in the marine surveying practice in Nigeria.
Ademiluyi who stated this at a forum in Lagos recently admitted that the trend could be attributed to the mindset of Nigerians which tended to believe that anything foreign was superior and better than the local ones dismissing that as an error of the mind.
He observed that a close look at those companies often referred to as foreign companies, one would hardly found a foreigner that was doing the job but Nigerians who were vast in those areas whereas the foreigner could be seen sitting in the office as the Managing Directors issuing orders and taking the glory.
According to him,” It is just that we have a mindset in Nigeria that prefers foreign goods, always looking down at our own and you find out like I said that there is not one foreigner in any of those companies that we call foreign that is seen doing the work. The MD sits in an office in Ikoyi or Victoria Island and then uses Nigerians to do the work.
“It is Nigerians that are doing the work. So, the capacity is not inadequate. It is there, Nigerians do all the Marine Surveying work that is available in Nigeria. It is just that the industry always want to prefer foreign companies possibly because of what you call packaging and then some of them will say, Ah! They deal in dollar, such funny considerations that do not have any impact on performance.
“That is, it is not to say that cheap is good but what I am saying is that, that mentality of foreign should actually not be there in the practice of marine surveying because if you go to our constitution, you will see all the areas, go to our website: www.centreformarinesurveyingnigeria.com, there is no area that we listed in the marine surveying practice that we don’t have Nigerians practicing and at highest level.
“So, the capacity is there, it is just for us to change that mindset of I must use a foreign company and the government has actually identified that by having that Nigerian Content Act where it says, any such practice must be carries out 100% by Nigerians. So, it is for the industry to now adopt that. That was why we have gone to PPRA, we have gone to the National Content Development Board, we have gone to NAPPIMS and we are working on it.
“And of course, we are not relenting on our oars. We are really training, giving more and more certifications. We did some certification recently, more and more people are joining the International Institute of Marine Surveying to expand our knowledge, to be able to network more. We are trying to network and bring in more capacity into Nigeria and have an organized Marine Surveying industry”, he said.
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