How I transformed MAN, Oron into a world class institution- Okpo

Joshua Okpo, is the Rector of the Nation’s oldest government-owned nautical school, Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron,Akwa Ibom in a media chat with some select few journalists in Lagos recently he explained how he was able to transform the premier institution into a world class Marine institution, how unemployment can be solved in the maritime sector and loads of other germane issues in the Academy. BABALOLA YUSUF ABIOLA was there.

Aside funding which has been like a mantra for all the rectors before you came on board, what do you view as most challenging aspect of the job since you came on board as rector?

First of all the basic challenge I encountered running the academy was the challenge of bringing peace to bear on that land  because when there was no peace I was brought in and if there would not be peace then I have to leave. But since it became a big challenge I have to go about for peace to reign so what did I do or what happened? Like I said it is not by my power, it is not by my myth.

As the rector I was instructed to expand the stakeholders’ interests for more sense of belonging. I ensured that the management staff was increased from five to thirty nine ,to give room for everybody from head of units to head of department, directors of school, to have a say collectively on how the academy is run.

How academy money will be spent, how academy policies will be articulated and directed. Everybody in management has been notified. The challenges like I said is the same with the peace process, which is to ensure that the immediate operating environment is at peace with the town so that teaching and learning will be a normal routine.  

When the academic environment became a theatre of war, where bloods were being spilled, when finger nails were cut off, these things will not allow education to thrive. Today the academy is a safe place, the workers are having their ways, construction work is going on, and the casual labourers from various communities are working together, eating together and worshipping together. The peace of the environment is now more appreciated.

After the academy became a weeping child arriving from all kinds of frivolous petitions and false stories.  The academy which is supposed to be given positive coverage to succeed in our national interest suffered some very negative angles to media coverage, which was untrue. We had to encourage the community relations strategy which I put in place so that host community indigenes will benefit a bigger bite of the academy’s coffers legitimately. We give scholarships as part of efforts to assist the community, we provide transformers for electricity, and we try to provide jobs for them by awarding contracts too.

In summary, the challenges was to tackle the problem of inter and intra clash businesses, the clash between the rich and the poor, the clash between the political class and the less privileged ,the clash between the senior staff and the junior staff of the academy, the clash between the privileged and the less privileged, those that has godfather, so to look at all  these things put together, it  therefore means that we need diplomacy  for us to stoop to conquer because arrogance will not solve the problem ,their own initiative quotient will not solve the problem ,but with the diplomacy we tried ,to the extent that we became the strong and the weak,the firm and the infirm and that was how we were able address the challenges. Today by the grace of God the academic stress is reducing, though we cannot satisfy everybody some lament to the press to make a fight but I am giving a general assurance that whatever is available, we put on the table and when you put on the table, it will be done in such a manner that we will save for the rainy days and when we save for the rainy days, whatever will go for the community gets to them. If all requests come at the same time, it is not proper.

Admission of cadets into the institution is done by batches, we believe it is better in batches and that is why last year we had three batches, we have finished with the second batch, third batch payment will commence in June 2013. On the issue of admission, emphasis is on quality, not numbers.  Right now as I speak with you we have evolved a style of admission strictly based on available space. We cannot take more than what we can confidently manage because with the upgrading in place there is no classroom that an instructor in nautical school, for example will be coming to train more than four cadets on the simulator at a time.

 If you are having twenty cadets on one simulator training session, none of the foreign instructor will take the academy seriously. If you take the marine engineers for example, you cannot put more than ten in a class but when National Board for Technical Education(NBTE) says twenty and  you are putting a hundred and twenty in class is very wrong and this is not acceptable and the best thing to do is to stop such acts of low quality crowd now.

As the rector of the academy, how would you rate the response of NIMASA to the 5% remittance for the academy?

On the issue of Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) 5% for the academy, I want to use this medium to say that I am very grateful to the present director general of NIMASA, that is Mr. Patrick Akpobolokemi. I am very grateful to him because I have never worked with any other D.G. since I was I appointed as rector of the school and from the history of the past, MAN Oron has never had it so good as it is with Patrick Akpobolokemi and I want every journalist to help me to thank the D.G. of NIMASA where ever you see him, tell him I say that he has done us well. We in the academy are very grateful.

I keep on saying that without Akpobolokemi and his management, the story you are hearing today you would not have heard about it and by the grace of God, as he has kept on encouraging us we have been able to address some of the challenges we had. I also want them (NIMASA) to help us by supporting our initiative to get sea time for our cadets through a consultant because they have been awesome all the way and we are very hopeful of the fact that the ship that the agency want to provide for our cadets will help reduce the problem of sea time so once again the press should help me to thank the director general of NIMASA for his support.

How do you hope to address the issue of sea time for the cadets of the academy?

We decided to pursue the problem of the mariners, because in the academy, the core mandate is how to train the mariners that is the nautical science and mariner engineering cadets. We have initiated our move to get employed onboard ships in Europe and South Africa  and what we are doing for now is to engage a consultant Messrs Bramah to enable us get the cadets practically trained, about one hundred mariners from nautical science cadets and one hundred and fifty from  marine engineering departments are to go onboard vessels.

We are going to pay about N8 to N9 million for each of the cadets for a period of 18 months for the sea time. So with that we will handle issue of the sea time challenge for our cadets. Although we have made proposals to the government for their contribution but that has not been met and we are optimistic on the possible take off of the project. However in our own initiative we have decided on our own on the issue of sea time for our cadets.

We are talking with some of the shipping companies we have good relationship with, to help us by granting our cadets sea time because management has decided that we are going to commit some internally generated funds and revenue to start a programme whereby the best and brightest ten or twenty mariners are given the opportunity on board sea going vessels. However I have not mentioned cadets from electrical engineers.

I have been given the concept that since the academy cadets have been regimented that they (ship owners) will prefer them to join on board their ships for them not to suffer any form of piracy and that the place they will love to come and train is maritime academy. Though we have been arguing on the price because they said N9 million and they also said that the money is not meant to pay the ship owners rather the money is meant to sustain the cadets,  their upkeep and their working materials then pay a stipend to the consultant.

The ship owners out of their free will are willing to ensure that they give them stipends to maintain the palliatives. Some of them have to restructure their cabins to accommodate some the cadets and that is why for a ship to give you space or take onboard 150 cadets especially when it is a cargo vessel, you will know the sacrifice that stakeholders have done and if we can train them for 18 months for sea competence then they can now go for their captaincy because the certificate we issue will be axxepted worldwide.

So that the issue of training Nigerian cadets will be a thing of the past, now the quality we are yearning is the one we want government to fund but for government to be convinced we are going to use our little resources maybe N15 million and see how we can start the project, monitor it and ensure that as it is working we can now communicate that we have put things in place.

What is the nature of admission into MAN Oron?

When you want to admit you place advert and by September 2013, we are going to do another to start another program for the upper session because this session is to start on the 23^rd of June. We have five courses that we offer at National Diploma (ND) and Higher National Diploma (HND) levels, the maritime transport, nautical science, marine and electrical engineering, boat and ship building technology and we have post graduate program for marine engineering and maritime transport. Now after we  have advertised, we  pay   N5,000 payable to designated Bank then collate all the entries and when that is done we now invite them for common entrance exams.

We have seven centers nationwide. We have Abuja centre, we have Yola centre, Calabar centre, Enugu centre, Port Harcourt centre and then Oron centre, now Enugu centre has been moved to Port Harcourt centre for some issue. like I said about 7,500 persons applied, after that we now invited 4,000 and the 4,000 we invited was to enable and ensure that people have been given issuance notice and be assured for another time or chance to be able to perform because the score, which is just like JAMB score line was very low and the average score line was 47%.

If you want to find out  people that scored  65 and above were not even up to 2,000 to come for it and we don’t have enough people to select so we decided to bring it down to ensure that we have up to 1,000 people to expand more applicants chances of securing admission. Maybe by the time they were writing the exams, their attentions were divided or they were not listening or maybe they were not conscious of what they were doing.

Other examiners were selected from various places like NPA, NIMASA, Shippers Council, Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy and other outfits in other to groom them. We place emphasis on the quality of youths we get admitted to ensure that our standards of academic and moral discipline are sustained and that social vices such as taking of hard drugs, hooliganism, and cultism do not find their way into Nigeria’s number one maritime training institution.

What is the academy doing in ensuring that people or cadets would be able to build ships in the country and how can that be achieved?

We are working on a new curriculum- boat building technology, which is a new initiative as naval architecture.  This area requires a lot of skill and collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders and we are ready to partner with them to achieve this.

We need to interface with other jetties, to interface with power and steel sector, we need to interface with the NNPC, with even the ship owners because in our own view some people find it difficult to interface but it takes two to tangle.

For instance when the academy wanted to go to Malmo for affiliation we know that the academy cannot do it alone, so we went to the ministry of transport. The Honourable Minister of Transport insisted that we cannot get the best out of World Maritime University without first reaching the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) therefore whatever they are going to do must carry the blessing of all Nigerian stakeholders and we must follow due process and that anything that will give a boost to manpower development must be done through collective effort. Every agency should work together to achieve a collective goal.

All effort must be put together to develop Nigeria because Nigeria cannot work if we don’t have a synergy and that is the way it should go.

How can the issue of employment be tackled after the cadets might have graduated?

First of all you look at the population of Nigeria as very important to answer that question. What is our population? When you look at our shoreline through the Gulf of Guinea from Senegal to Gabon you will agree with me that there are a lot of economic activities going on there. There are so many things that happens there, the fishing industry alone is such that can create a good market so if one can bring that aspect up and now have about 5000 people that have sea competence or captains that can command vessels I can tell you that one single policy that Nigeria will make by asking NNPC to insist that before any vessel is allowed to carry Nigerian cargo such vessel must provide jobs for our indigenous maritime professionals.

That such vessel has Nigerian seafarers onboard. Then you will see that the stakeholders will be rushing after Nigerians and we will provide the backing. What we are doing is that we have refused to build the capacity to fill the competency requirement that will increase our acceptability.  Let give credit to Chief Isaac Jolapamo for his efforts in this direction. He has stood firmly for the call for a training ship of the academy, he has stood firmly for the graduates of maritime academy and he has been at the forefront of that crusade and I want Nigerians to commend him because he has been a father and a mentor.

The parallel existence between Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme run by NIMASA and the training of cadets in MAN appears conflicting, what is your reaction to that?

This is like asking yourself why there is more than one security outfit in Nigeria, if the remaining of Lagos state senior officers is embarking on the creation of state security nothing stops the Igbo officers or the Calabar senior officers to carry out the same experiment on the issue of high charges or the issue of corruption, we are talking about how they can put energy together to make sure that we train Nigerian cadets adequately. NIMASA seafarers’ development programme is also concerned with how to get cadet, our Nigerian cadets abroad for sea time after formal training.

As we speak NIMASA does not own any ship yet therefore if they expect to send cadets abroad for sea time as way of development, nothing stops a state government in Nigeria from doing same by sending its own people to go abroad for sea time to lessen the burden on NIMASA thus in that regard NIMASA has done well and we are trying to do well too. It is not conflicting or contradictory, it rather compliments. The more the better for our youths and the country.

What is the academy doing to ensure that swimming pool is made available for cadets?

As part of our efforts to improve the quality of training being offered to our cadets, we are poised at ensuring that all our graduates are good swimmers and the pool is an important infrastructure in achieving this goal.

Let me start by saying that contract for the pool, has been awarded since 2012 and the consultant has been mobilized to site and we also like it to be done so that it will function for learning and recreation. The pool is going to have  a pavilion, race course, squash court within same vicinity and we will light up the place so that there will light for 24 hours.