The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), has said it will train 250 Nigerian cadets as part of its mandate to develop capacity for the Nigerian maritime industry.
Special Assistant on Communication and Strategy to NIMASA’s Director-General, Mr. Ubong Essien, who represented his boss made this known at a media parley at the Agency’s Eastern Zonal office in Port Harcourt. According to him, the training would be done in line with one of the three performance pillars of the Director-General, known as Shipping Development.
Essien said the NIMASA boss had at the inception of his administration in March 2020 outlined “a Triple ‘S’ agenda of Maritime Security, Maritime Safety and Shipping Development’’.
The NIMASA DG, he said, was committed to ensuring that adequate capacity for the industry was built to ensure economic prosperity through the maritime domain.
“While some of the cadets are due for sea-time training, others will undergo the mandatory Certificate of Competency (CoC) and will be trained in the Philippines, UK and Romania.
“These 250 cadets represent just the first of three batches planned for future training”, he stressed.
Earlier, the Eastern Zonal Coordinator and Director, Mallam Sani Audu, who addressed participants at the parley, urged the media to engage more with the agency at the zonal level in order to educate the Nigerian public on some of the major interventions of the zone.
He noted that such interventions were especially in the area of removal of water hyacinth to ensure safer navigational channels for ships and vessels.
Audu said the interventions also involved the removal of “marine litter and plastics clearing for the restoration of the cleanness of the waters in the zone at various hotspot locations”.
The locations included Okutukutu in Yenagoa; Port Harcourt to Bonny axis; Otamiri-Nworie River in Imo; Epie-Oxbow creek in Yenagoa; Otubhi-Elebele Ogbia; Idundu-Calabar axis in Cross River; and Ikot Abasi in Akwa Ibom.
