The House of Representatives Committee on Maritime Safety, Education, and Administration has pledged to scrutinize every unfinished project left by contractors at the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, situated in Oron, Akwa Ibom State.
Additionally, the committee resolved to summon the leadership of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) regarding the disbursement of the five percent allocation earmarked for the Academy, highlighting discrepancies in its timely remittance.
These resolutions were reached subsequent to a presentation by Commodore Duja Emmanuel Effedua (retd.), the Rector of the Academy, during the committee’s oversight function to the Academy held on Thursday.
While addressing the committee at the conference hall of the Nautical Building, the Rector conveyed his distress over the widespread infrastructural deterioration at the academy, underscoring the severity of the situation, which had reached such a critical point and even internationally.
Effedua who said he was a cadet added, “I was shocked to know that the academy collapsed, it collapsed people were chasing mundane issues, instead of training. The International Maritime Organisation threatened to delist Nigeria as a place where maritime students should be trained because it thought the academy no longer had the clout to train people.
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“The Nigerian government also asked for a favour, you come and identify the problems of the Academy and let us know the way forward and also give us time. So, the federal government set up an interim management committee which comprised renowned Nigerians and people who have worked in the maritime industry for a long time I was appointed as the acting rector and later coopted to work with the committee for six months.”
In response to the presentation during the interactive session, Khadijah Ibrahim, the committee’s chairperson, asserted that every contractor who abandoned projects since the institution’s inception would undergo investigation and be required to account for every Kobo received, serving as a deterrent to others.
Represented by the vice chairman of the committee, Uduak Ududoh (PDP, Akwa Ibom), Ibrahim emphasized that upon returning to Abuja, the committee would correspond with the institution, underscoring that the unacceptable practice of project abandonment after taxpayers’ money had been disbursed must cease.