NIMASA asked to show proof of engaging 11,956 seafarers in 24 months

Seafarers have challenged the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency’s (NIMASA) claim of placing about 11,956 seafarers on cabotage vessels in less than three years.
This is coming after an official statement from NIMASA claimed it has placed a total of 11,956 Nigerian seafarers onboard cabotage vessels from January 2021 to July 2023.

According to the statement, 3,705 seafarers were placed onboard cabotage vessels in 2021; 7,238 seafarers were placed in 2022, while 1, 013 were placed between January and July 2023.

The statement also noted that to a considerable extent, NIMASA had ensured the placement of Nigerian seafarers on board cabotage vessels in line with its placement function and the provisions of the Cabotage Act, 2003.
The agency also stated that 539 Nigerian seafarers have been recommended for replacement in the first quarter of 2023, adding that cabotage manning applications are now processed on the condition that all foreign crew, especially ratings on board vessels are to be replaced with Nigerian seafarers/cadets within two to three weeks of operations.

Unfortunately, this did not go down well with seafarers as they challenged the agency’s claims and requested evidence and the identities of the cabotage vessels the seafarers were placed on.
Master of a 47,000mt DWT Tanker vessel operating within coastal and International waters of Nigeria and the West Coast of Africa, Captain Ogunsakin William, queried the statistics, noting that the figures were not justifiable going by the current rate of unemployment among seafarers in the country.

Williams, who has spent over three decades in the seafaring profession, cited data from 2020, which indicated that Nigeria had approximately 6,000 seafarers, with women making up about 9.4 per cent of that number.
William, who is the President of the Alumni Association of the Federal College of Fisheries and Marine Technology (FCFMT), further expressed shock over the sudden growth in the number of seafarers between 2021 and 2023.

He argued that there is no correlation between the number of cadets that have graduated and the number that NIMASA claimed to have employed on vessels.

William decried the multiplicity of maritime training institutions in the country with no vessels or effective efforts by NIMASA to create jobs to absorb them.

He alleged that the figure might have been padded by NIMASA because of the large number of students in these training institutions.
“When I saw that information, I became worried about how the figures came to be. As of 2020, statistics showed that Nigeria’s seafarers are about 6,000 and out of which we have about 9.4 percent of them to be women. In the registry, we had 5,472 men and 567 females. At that year, Maritime Academy, Oron had 250 students out of which 26 of them were female, which is about 10.4 per cent of the students in that year.

“As of 2020, the NSDP programme recorded only 2,041 trained cadets, out of these, 204 were females, which was 4.9 per cent of the people. How come there is rapid growth between 2021 and 2023,” he queried.

Also speaking, the Secretary-General of the Merchant Seafarers Association of Nigeria (MESAN), Captain Alfred Oniye, expressed reservations about the authenticity of NIMASA’s claim, alleging that it might have been cooked up and not necessarily from the agency.

Oniye alleged that NIMASA cannot boast of employing 200 seafarers among the over 3,000 Nigerian seafarers the agency has trained under the NSDP, noting that there are currently no cabotage vessels that can accommodate that huge number of seafarers in the country.

He, however, called on NIMASA to publish the names of the seafarers it claimed to have placed onboard cabotage vessels between 2021 and 2023 as well as the names of the shipping companies.
“Where are the vessels in Nigeria? It implies that each of those vessels accommodated 22 crew members. I see this information as misleading to the public. If what they are saying is true, let them come out and defend it. It is a big slap on a seafarer’s face. If they truly have the evidence, let them publish the names of the seafarers and the companies,” he stated.

The immediate past National President of the Nigerian Merchant Navy Officers and Water Transport Senior Staff Association (NMNO/WTSSA), Matthew Alalade said the figures released by NIMASA are not realistic, adding that it is just a ploy to cajole the public.
“What we want them to do is to train more people, especially on specialised courses for training. I don’t know how they got that figure. I don’t know whether they are the ones who recruited them or the people who sourced for their jobs on their own and got employment. It is not that NIMASA directly engaged them. Personally, I think it is not justifiable for NIMASA to say so,” he stressed.

Also speaking, the President, the National Association of Masters Mariners (NAMM), Captain Tajudeen Alao, said the figure NIMASA gave out must have been taken from the Maritime Labour Department of the agency, which is responsible for crew employment and cadet placement and training.
Alao further stressed that the figures should be verifiable at the agency to clear doubts from the minds of stakeholders in the industry.