85% of manning crew onboard NLNG vessels are Nigerians – NSML MD

The Nigerianisation objective of the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) has been realised with the creation of the Maritime Center of Excellence (MCOE), Abdulkadir Ahmed, managing director of NLNG Shipping and Marine Services Limited (NSML), said.

Ahmed disclosed that since the creation of the Maritime Centre of Excellence (MCOE), a specialised energy training arm of the company, Nigerian seafarers have taken over 85 percent of the manning crew of the 13 Liquefied natural gas (LNG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) vessels on the fleet of the NLNG.

Ahmed told journalists in Lagos that NSML was created with the sole purpose of domesticating international maritime skill sets, locally; and providing opportunities for Nigerians to participate in that sphere.

“We have a Nigerianisation objective, which we’ve attained as 85 percent of the seafarers on our vessel today are Nigerians. It was deliberate to say that we’re a Nigerian company and in line with our purpose, we want to domesticate. You cannot domesticate by simply importing foreigners to do the job. Hence, it’s about developing people locally and giving them the opportunity and that’s why 85 percent of our seafarers today are Nigerians, from the highest to the lowest level.
“We have about 5 percent of foreigners onboard our vessels to allow for cross-fertilisation of ideas by bringing some foreigners into our operations,” he said.

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He said NSML achieved that objective by bringing training courses to Nigerians to manage the ships.
“We said to ourselves that there was no need for us to be sending people abroad for training. Let us domesticate the training centre as much as we can. Yes, it was a lot of investment, but we did it, domesticated, and got all the accreditations,” he said.

By domesticating the training, he said, over 70 percent of the cost of training personnel abroad was saved.
“If you can cut the cost of the training to at least 30 percent, it will create access for more people to be trained. For example, if you have a budget to train a certain number of people, if you have to send them abroad you can only do about five but domesticating it will cut the cost to 30 percent and allow you to train more people.

He said NSML has 11 LNG vessels under its management and two LPG vessels making it 13 vessels.

“We recently took over the technical management of one of the most advanced LNG vessels in the world with cutting-edge technology in terms of efficiency, decarbonisation, and carbon emission. We are equally diversifying the type of vessels that we manage, which is why we now moved into managing LPG vessels.

He said over 200 cadets have been onboard NLNG vessels in the last six to seven years, amounting to about 40 and 50 cadets a year.

On its flagship Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme, he said NSML has through the ‘Clean Water Initiative’, rid the Nigerian waters of plastic and debris.