Indigenous marine pilots under the aegis of Escravos River Pilots Nigeria Limited have been rendering marines pilot services for more than ten generations, in this interview with sweetcrude’s Godwin Oritse, Captain Solomon Perebo stated  the people of Gbaramatu kingdom first offered such services to Europeans as far back as 1888. He also spoke about the challenges they are currently facing which to a large extent have put their services in jeopardy.
Excerpts:

Can we meet you?
My names are Captain Solomon Samsom Perebo of the Escravos River Pilots Nigeria Limited, we render marines pilot services to merchants vessels calling at the ports of Warri, Koko, Sapele , Burutu and Aladja.

How has the company been in existence?
This company has been even before the independence of this country, however, we inherited this trade from our great grand fathers as far as the late 17th century. This was when the Portuguese first came to this part of the country for their trade.

During that our forefathers who were fisher men met these foreigners and offered to guide them through the deep and shallow parts of the channels.

However, ,we are have been piloting ships from Forcados channels, the Forcados river used you be channel to the port but because the Forcados channel is not as deep as the Escravos channel, the Government of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa approved the use of Escravos channel which gave birth to the Delta pilots Union an organisation that was registered in 1958 which was later changed to Escraos ship pilots Nigeria Limited in 2009 currently working in collaboration with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Delta is the only place you have private pilots in Nigeria, a trade that was inherited from our forefathers.

Captain Perebo

Most of have gone the basic training, some were trained at the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, (MAN) Oron Akwa-Ibom State after which we moved on to the Maritime Regional University in Accra, Ghana.
Some of us were sponsored by the NPA and NPA have also concluded plans to sponsor some of our people to the United Kingdom for training before the end of the first quarter of this year.

What are the major constraints you do have?
The constraints we have right now is the Escravos channel, that channel needs to dredged .

The channel has not been dredged since 1997 and there is lot of siltation taking at the channel every now and then and this has affected the number of vessels that calls at the Delta ports. Unfortunately, the bar determines the type of ships that comes in the ports. We use this medium to appeal to the Federal Government, the state government and other stakeholders like Chevron, Shell who use this channel from time to time to help dredge the channel.

We have complained about this to the government but nothing has done about it. Presently, the channel is 6.4 meters, thereby limiting the size of vessels that can come to the ports.  If the channel can be dredged to 7 or ten meters then bigger ships can come into the ports and this will make the government generate more revenue and this will generate more employments for us.

Secondly, the issue buoys have also become a challenge as the channels are buoyed any more. Before now, the channels were buoyed from the fairway buoy to the harbour. There are long overdue to be changed but they have lost to the waves while other went under.

As I speak with you we do not have a single buoy, if we were not use to the channel, to bring in vessels would have been a problem.

At a time, local pilots were seen as saboteurs who held vessels to ransom, do we still have such problems here?
That problem is stopped, we are saboteurs, I want to correct that impression first and fore most, we want to improve the entire shipping business in the Delta ports we cannot go against the system.

What happened before now was that NPA at a point used the Navy to push us out of the system so that we will have access to ships and it is through these piloting services that we make a living.

How has your involvement in the shipping business helped in protecting government’s interest in the Delta ports?
Since we entered into agreement with NPA, I am personally went to Lagos to sign the agreement on the 22nd of February 2010 and ever since then there has been a healthy working relations with the NPA .

What is the staff strength of the company?
The staff strength of the company presently is 54at is the staff strength of the company?