NIMASA trains over 2,500 Nigerians in seafaring

By Udeme Clement
The Director General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dakuku Peterside has said that human capacity development  is a panacea to growing unemployment rate in the economy.

Peterside who said this at the 1st Annual Lecture of Swaaya Limited, Publishers of Freedom Online news with the theme: “Unemployment: How do we tame this monster?,”  held at Sheraton hotel, Lagos, stressed that, to stem this tide, the Agency through its Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) has trained over 2,500 Nigerian students in various maritime related courses in reputable maritime institutions outside the country.
According to him, “Capacity development programmes embarked upon by the Agency are geared towards taming the foreseen lacuna in the seafaring profession in the future, which is a global challenge at present.”
Represented by the Agency’s Executive Director, Maritime Labour and Cabotage Services, Mr. Gambo Ahmed, he also hinted that the NSDP scheme, which has already started producing graduates will soon take a new look, where Nigeria will also be a large exporter of seafarers like India and the Philippines who generate millions of dollars from the pool of its seafarers in the globally market.
He went on “Let me use this opportunity to call on all Nigerians, regardless of race, religion, political interest or affiliations to support the Federal Government in its quest to defeat corruption, which has eaten deep into the fortunes of the economy, so that we can together make our country great again”.