NIMAREX boss seeks establishment of more shipyards for job creation

Worried by the growing volume of unemployment in maritime nation where opportunities in the shipping business have remained untapped, Ayorinde Adedoyin, chairman, Nigeria Maritime Expo (NIMAREX) 2015 planning committee, has called for the establishment of more ship building yards to create direct and indirect unemployment for Nigerian youths.

“An effective strategy to tackle the nagging problem of unemployment in Nigeria lies in establishment of additional shipyards in Africa’s most populous nation,” according to Adedoyin.

Adedoyin, who said this in Lagos recently, argued that shipyard had the capacity to bring the problem of unemployment to a minimal state owing to the fact that one shipyard alone required large workforce to operate, aside the indirect jobs that the yard can create.

He suggested that Nigeria could adopt the Brazilian model, which according to him, required ships meant for long-term contracts to be built in country.

“In Brazil, for example, the law says categorically that any vessel that would do a long-term contract in Brazil must be locally built. This is why different shipyards in the world ran to Brazil to set up shipyards and that has succeeded in creating thousands of jobs for Brazilians,” he said.

Continuing, he said: “Why do we find it very difficult to enforce the law that we have written? If we enforce it, it would be beneficial to us. If there are functional shipyards, they will have direct workers and suppliers of the needed raw materials including food vendors, who will indirectly benefit from the chains opportunities such investment, will create.”

Shipyard, he said, is capable of creating jobs for engineers, spare-parts dealers and several other industry players.

Adedoyin, who noted that there was need for full enforcement of the Nigerian Cabotage Law, said many trained seafarers in Nigeria had remained jobless due to non availability of Cabotage vessels to employ them. The NIMAREX boss further lamented the plight of Nigerian ship owners, saying that the average ship owner in Nigeria had been reduced to the level of begging for jobs that were legally theirs.