THE Chairman, Senate Committee on Marine Transport , Hajia Zainab Kure, in this interview with Sweetcrude’s Godwin Oritse, said that the committee will continue to support the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron which is currently under  going massive infrastructural changes

Excerpts
What is your impression on the inspection of projects at the Maritime Academy ?
We still have not settled down for proper business, we are still going round the projects and see how far what we appropriated for last year has been put to use and what level the appropriation has been put to use.

Until we sit down, with the papers to be able to compare what we have seen now and what is on papers, I will not be able to say much.
If I am to compare what we saw two years ago because we were here precisely 2012 sometime in June with what we are seeing now, there is a huge  difference.

Some of the projects we saw then were on –going, but some of them are completed and some are almost completed .

Like the simulator room we went into today, was an experience and we even watched our cadets being trained on the machine, when we came about two years ago, these simulator machines were not there for the simple fact that one of the simulators was taken for repairs and the new one that was ordered by the academy had not arrived the last time we came here.

So we did not get to see those ones, but we knew that we already appropriated for it and we promised then that we will come back to see these equipment that are very  germane to the training of the cadets.
And there has been this complaints about the locals, about the problem that was being fixed in the community, thank God, today peace has returned.

The warring parties have agreed to work together, we saw the warring  chiefs ,they both came to receive us, this I think is a very wonderful development and we are happy about it and this peaceful development has also guaranteed the safety  and security of our cadets here .

We took a ride to one of the affected communities and we discovered that a Police post is being constructed and we also saw the level of construction work going on there and we have seen the need for the communities who gave out their land free of charge to the academy  to be rehabilitated.

So it needs us to go back, sit down and talk and like we have said to the management of the academy, it behoves on them to sit down and work out modalities for the affected communities to be rehabilitated and be carried along in the development of the institution.

Surprisingly, we heard that the since the existence of the institution, most of the locals have not benefitted by way of employment and admission into the academy and this situation calls for serious attention.
The locals must be given opportunity to have their children here and made to be part of the menial jobs going around the academy

The Rector raised an issue that cultism was beginning to creep into the institution, do you think that this is a worrisome situation ?
Yes, that is quite worrisome,  but you know that  the issue of cultism is not something new in Nigeria , what is certainly new is the lack of capacity to curb it .
The academy is trying its best and working out modalities to curb it and certainly if the management of the academy is on top of the situation, it will not rear its head.

There are lots of institutions in the country that had similar problems but it is now a thing of the past.
At the last NIMAREX expo, there was so much agitation for support for the Maritime academy, with what you have seen , what level of support will the National Assembly, your Committee especially will want to give the academy?
If you ask the Rector, he will tell you that they never had it so good, since I came on board as Chairman of this Committee , we have given absolute support to the academy.

In fact there was time, aside from the five percent statutory allocation from the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency NIMASA) for infrastructure, we even asked for a grant of N2billion for the academy and N1billion has been released to them for infrastructure and all this is for the academy to upgrade curriculum and facilities for it to become a degree awarding institution.

The reason why the part of the land was given to the academy by the State government has been tailored into providing these facilities for an upgrade of the academy, we have been doing our best and do not forget, this is the Committee’s second visit to the academy.
Now what we are working  towards, is the acquisition of a training vessel.

After the accreditation by the National University Commission, (NUC), not only will it be a degree awarding institution, the issue of sea time training will also be given to cadets that passed through this academy .We have not passed the budget of the Internallly Generated Revenue (IGR) of MAN Oron for that simple reason because we want to see how we can prioritize some of these projects to see which ones are of significance and approve them while others are pending.

Is there distinct possibility that through your distinguished effort on this Committee that the statutory allocation to the academy will be raised from the five percent ?
We tried to see what we could do in that manner, even about two years ago, we even proposed a certain percentage but it did not work.

But because nothing stops us from trying again, we certainly are going to try our best to see that we scale it up. We even started by thinking of 7.5% percent , and somehow, we even zeroed to six percent  but it did not work.
There were a lot of challenges but we have resolved those challenges so we are still going to sit down and deliberate on the issue and see how we can get that scaled up.

And because we could not get the grant scaled up,that was why we went through the back door to get the grant for the academy.
The grant came from NIMASA, so if increased percentage did not come, the grant came.

We are almost at the end of the inspection of the projects and I am sure that you will give the management a pass with what you have seen so far will you not ?
Not yet, I have told you that we have to merge what we have seen with the paper works and see if they reflect the true picture of what we have seen.