Nigerian Maritime University Needs Government Commitment

The recent inauguration of the Nigerian Maritime University (NMU)’s temporary campus at Kurutie, Delta State, came with the expected euphoria among the indigenes and other Nigerians present at the occasion for obvious reasons.

The university will for the first time, mark in colors, the place of Kurutie, a rather hidden Ijaw community, in the country’s map.

The town and its neighbors will no longer be altered by the creeks but will become a breeding place for worldwide employment opportunities.

But the good news goes beyond that. Being Nigeria’s first maritime university, its establishment shows a deviation from the usual norm as real time development of human maritime capacity has now clearly begun.

As the Delta State Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, puts it, “the university is a well thought out venture at a time like this when the country has seen severe dearth of maritime labor.”

In the days of the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), the country boasted of well-bred nautical engineers, captains and seamen who manned the vessels. But with the death of the NNSL, no younger nautical experts were trained as the old seamen fizzled out. The new maritime university is expected to turn the tides for the better.

Aware of the fact that the university will record little or no success without the federal government’s commitment, the sponsors of the university, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), the leaders of the Kurutie Community and the university’s council, have unanimously sought both the federal and the Delta State governments’ support in growing the institution. While academic activities are about to begin at the Kurutie campus, works are ongoing at the NMU’s permanent campus located in Okerenkoko, also an Ijaw community, in the state.

Expressing his joy and support for the university, Okowa said, “We ought to have started much earlier but it is not too late. I will like to urge Nigerians in various positions to think outside the box as the NIMASA director-general had done.”

He noted that Nigeria now has so many conventional universities with little regard for practical learning.

“We must look more in the direction of institutions that will give practical training to our children. At this developmental level, Nigeria needs more of practical institutions than the conventional ones that are everywhere now,” he stressed.

An agency in the Federal Ministry of Transport, the NIMASA is expected spearhead the development of the university’s permanent campus. This is in addition to the agency’s financial support to the Nigerian Maritime Academy, Oron, Akwa-Ibom State, and the National Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP), under which it has taken the cost of training about 2,500 Nigerians in maritime capacity in universities abroad in the last four years.

According to the director-general of the NIMASA, Dr Patrick Akpobolokemi, the federal government had approved a budget of N50 billion for the building and development of the NMU. He said the agency is expected to singlehandedly fund the country’s first institution for maritime studies. Hinting the Delta State governor of the maritime business potential of the country, Akpobolokemi sought the support of his government in developing the university, which has got its pro-chancellor, vice and deputy vice chancellors, registrar and other major appointments.

He said, “This University comes with a huge departure from conventional universities as it combines paramilitary training with maritime studies. Nigeria remains one of the countries of the world with huge maritime potential. There’s so much we can do with our maritime resources even more than what a country such as Philippines is currently doing.

Currently, Philippines earns over $6 billion from exporting maritime labour.