Shipowners accuse NIMASA of turning NSDP into contract -awarding jamboree

The President, Shipowners’ Association of Nigeria (SOAN), Engr. Greg Ogbeifun has described the National Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) as a contract awarding program.

He said this yesterday at the International Press Centre in the Maritime Reporters’ Association of Nigeria (MARAN), when they celebrated the 2015 international day of Seafarers tagged, “Seafarers in the democratic dispensation: “How far have we fared?”

Ogbeifun, who thumped down NSDP ,said the programme is structurally defective and amount to waste of government resources.

He also said it was wrong for NIMASA to turn the program into a contract awarding jamboree.

“With due respect, the NSDP get to a point where it became a contract awarding thing that people get contract to train cadets around the world. The evidences are bound.”

“I am speaking from first hand information, NSDP have been turned into a contract awarding program and that is wrong.

“For instance, one of the contractors that get the contract took the cadets to Poland and when they finished in the class room ,they were told to come back to Nigeria to get their sea-time training experience and that was why you see them advertise they need training vessels.’, he asserted.

He said the scheme was originally structured to fail because of the defect such as non- provision of training berth by the foreign institutions.

“If the scheme is working or well structured,  you tied the institution to train your cadets but, no foreigners will want to see a Nigerian on his ship because they believed if they are trained, they become an asset.

“When the gentle man from Poland came, I told him he will pay me because he got it as a contractor and I must also participate because I will feed them and equip them so, he paid me and I put them on my ship.”the ship owner declared.

Ogbeifun, who is a member of the 2012 presidential Maritime retreat committee of the Federal government, said shipowners would rather prefer cadets from Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron or Regional Maritime Academy, Ghana than foreign trained cadets with no practical experience.