Chief Executive Officer, Jenkon Oil and Gas Ltd, Chief Dr. Mkgeorge Onyung (left);Member Governing Council, Nigerian Content and Development and Monitoring Board(NCDMB), Mina Oforiokuma; Facilitator, Dominic Bigott; President, Nigerian Chamber of Shipping , Andy Isichei; Director General , Ms Obiageli Obi and Dr Chris Asoluka at a Training Organised by Nigerian Chamber of Shipping in Collaboration with Lloyd’s Maritime Academy for Operators in Maritime Industry in Lagos, yesterday. PHOTO; NAJEEM RAHEEM
To build capacity in the maritime sector, the Nigerian Chamber of Shipping (NCS) in collaboration with United Kingdom-based maritime academy, Lloyd’ Maritime Academy, has organised a three-day training entitled, “Commercial Risk in Shipping” to achieve this aim.
The President of the chamber, Andy Isichei, said training was focused on the risk associated with shipping, while explaining that capacity building, as human resource is most valuable for any nation.
Addressing newsmen during the training in Lagos yesterday, Isichei stressed the training would help stakeholders position themselves for positive development in the market as participants would go back and add value to their respective organisations.
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“So, we realised the risk associated with shipping business and that most banks in Nigeria have toxic asset, that is, bad load rising from shipping activities and that Nigerians have need for more knowledge in that area (shipping). So, NCS decided to bring this course to Nigeria.“Normally, Lloyd carried out this training in London and Dubai, hence if you are in Nigeria and you want to benefit from the invaluable information in this course, you have to buy your ticket, change money, and go abroad,” he said.
The Director-General of the chamber, Obiageli Obi, a lawyer, said that the Nigerian maritime sector does not have the capacity to drive the industry.She lamented lack of fund to stakeholders to invest in the sector, which results to businesses being handled by foreigners.
“We spoke to the banks and they said they were not interested in shipping because they have huge portfolios. We talked to operators they said they didn’t have money to buy vessels to operate in the industry.
“They were incapacitated. Many foreigners were doing Nigerian businesses and this should not be so. They wanted vessels to operate the business but banks were not lending them money. We spoke to regulators, they said yes, we need a fleet but we have CVFF fund and they are not ready to release them until some kind of structures are put on ground.
“So, we said everybody needed to come together to look into it. We need to build capacity in this area. That was why we decided to talk about the ship financing, about the risks that are common. So we contacted Llyod academy in London and we went into collaboration with them and this is our first training”, she said.
According to her, the training will bring people together to celibate on how to solve some problems encountered in the sector and the way forward as well as help boost productivity and transparency in the industry.
The representative of Lloyd Maritime Academy, Dominic Bigott, said there are opportunities on the global shipping market by learning the local content of Nigeria.“We are also going to have a penalty discussions to understand what we are going to learn more from each other,” he added.He stated they had gotten different feedbacks from all over Europe and they wanted to combine it with Nigeria’s local content.
Source: G Business
