Ini Ekong Charles Udonwa is the Executive Chairman of Norfin Offshore Shipyard Limited and Executive Chairman of Norfin Offshore Group, promoters of a new shipyard located at Oruk Anam, Akwa Ibom State. In this interview with AYOYINKA JEGEDE, he reveals how shipbuilding and maintenance can help reduce insecurity, unemployment and other vices in the country.
What’s the importance of shipbuilding to the nation’s economy?
Nigerians, the government and companies import averagely $5.6 billion dollars worth of vessels into the country yearly to operate in oil and gas industries, and also into fishery industry. Most of these are in purchases of Floating Production, Storage and Offloading ships (FPSO), security vessels, jack up rigs, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) vessels and other related offshore support vessels. For instance, Egina FPSO delivered to Nigeria in January in 2018 costs up to $8 billion.
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Uchechukwu Nnaike
A maritime education and training institution, Charkin Maritime Academy (CMA), situated in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, has made public its interim accreditation from the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE).
The accreditation from the NBTE is for CMA to run two critical National Diploma (ND) programmes, namely Nautical Science and Marine Engineering.
It is on record that CMA is one of the first private maritime academies in Nigeria to be given accreditation by the NBTE to run diploma programmes in the two courses.
Already, the school has commenced the process of admitting fresh students for the 2021/2022 academic session, just as it has fixed February 13, 2021 as the date for its entrance examination.