Stakeholder Faults Seafarers’ Dev Programme

A maritime stakeholder and a shipping operator, Mr Greg Obinwa has described the National Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) as being structurally defective and a waste of government resources.
Obinwa who made this known in an interaction with The Tide in Port Harcourt, Thursday said that such programme has not made much impact than just contract business.
He said that such seafarers programme being put up by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) was a wrong one, as it only creates avenue  for making money.
“With due respect, the NSDP got to a point where it became a contract-awarding thing that people get contract to train cadets around the world which is wrong.
“For instance, one of the contractors that got the contract took the cadets to Poland and when they finished in the classroom, they were told to come back to Nigeria to get their sea-time and that was why you see them advertise that they need training vessels”, he said.
Obinwa who was a member of the 2012 Presidential Maritime Retreat Committee, said that ship owners would rather prefer cadets from Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron or Regional Maritime University, Ghana, than foreign-trained cadet with no practical experience.

Corlins Walter