Amaechi commissioning projects at Maritime Academy Oron

Okafor Ofiebor/Port Harcourt

The management of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN) in Oron local government area of Akwa Ibom State , has been told to embark on training and award of scholarship to students and lecturers of the academy.

This directive given was by the Minister of Transportation , Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi when he performed the commissioning of some key projects executed by the school authority on Monday.

Amaechi said, award of scholarship and training of personnel staff should be made a priority by the school management as it would be of immense benefit to the school and Nigerians generally.

He said ” The first thing to say to you is that you need to train your staff and sponsor them to get the Masters and PhDs . This is to enable us have quality seafarers and maritime graduates. Our maritime Industry is extremely weak . So, we must encourage our staff and students in terms of scholarship and training so they can compete favourably with the world”.

“There are so many countries that are surviving on maritime, not on oil. We need to begin to look inside and see how to grow our nation and our economy because if you don’t create an avenue for employment you would create an avenue for crime”,he said.

Amaechi also said that while providing such opportunities for members of the academy the management should not hesitate to discipline any lecturer or staff who fails to discharge his or her primary duty.

Amaechi said efforts should also be made by the management to encourage teaching especially in the area of introducing allowances to lecturers.

“Discipline should also be made essential by management. Any lecturer or staff that is not playing by the rules should be shown the way out. The greatest problem we have in Nigeria is lack of enforcement of laws”.

“It is Important that I clear the air on the issue of allowances. It does not include the non -academic staff .I am only talking about the academic staff because we have very few of them. Nobody is willing to come here (Oron) to teach. So, you need to ensure that you encourage people to come and live in Oron and teach the students, and to encourage them their take home must be interesting

“The law is very clear about payment of salaries. I have told the Rector that If he can’t pay them outside what the civil service requires he should introduce allowances that can encourage both local and foreigners to come and teach”,he said.

Some of the projects commissioned by the Minister includes; the school auditorium, Administrative block among others.

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