By Stephen Ubanna
Daku Peterside, Director General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA and other World Maritime Administrators are currently meeting in the Asian country of Singapore, where Simon Tersoo ,a Nigerian, was said to have won the Future Maritime Leaders essay competition.
The Global Essay Competition, titled “Emerging Technologies: Autonomous Shipping and Seafarers’ Continuous Professional Relevance,” was said to have been organised by Global Maritime Forum Perhaps to ensure that participants who submitted their entries in the Essay Competition, Peterside was one of the three African Maritime Administrators invited to the’’ exclusive Maritime Forum’’ in the Asian country.
The Value News learnt that top three essays were selected from 140 shortlisted entries from 46 countries that participated in the annual competition Tersoo, a Nigerian and who is incidentally a Maritime Safety Officer at NIMASA and the other two winners of the Essay Competition were said to have made compelling presentations on their essays at the Global Maritime Forum where the Agency Director General was a major participant.
The NIMASA Staff was said to have written on ‘’how to prepare the next generation of seafarers for digitalised ships’’, believed to be the future of shipping. He was said to have anchored his write-up to the bourgeoning technological innovation, Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship ,MASS, which the International Maritime Organisation ,IMO, had defined as a ship which “can operate independently of human interaction.”
His essay, according to participants painted the picture of a future where ‘’ships will be fully digitalised, automated, autonomously piloted, and controlled from both onshore and offshore’’, describing it as the’’ next phase of disruptive innovation in shipping’’.
He was said to have acknowledged the immense benefits of the autonomous shipping regime but however, identified a major challenge of the innovation as the ‘’threat posed to the jobs of the over 1.5 million seafarers working on board ships worldwide. Given his expert knowledge on the digitized ship, he was said to have suggested that the committee on Human Element Training and Watch-keeping HTW, of IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee,(MSC) “will have to re-organise the curriculum of Maritime Training Institutions,MTIs, globally to address the challenge by embracing the new trend.
He is optimistic that if these could be done , it would go a long way in tilting the seafarers training more towards maritime information communications technology ,ICT, and regulations that could enable them to’’ participate effectively in the technological revolution’’. An elated Tersoo, was happy that the retraining of existing seafarers in the recent had actually fitted into the new digital era. This is good news for Maritime Institutions all over the world including the Maritime Accademy oron,Akwa Ibom state finance by NIMASA.
Note that the NIMASA Safety Officer, global Maritime Essay Competition winner was a product of the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme ,NSDP,had who had worked on board a vessel is now fully involved in regulatory duties in the Maritime Agency.
It is not surprising why he had the opportunity of seeing both sides of the life of a seafarer but he attributed his success in the essay competition to the ‘’push for a knowledge driven by the current Management of NIMASA under the close watch of Peterside, noting that he was challenged daily by the ‘’leadership and innovation at the Agency’’.
T the two other shortlisted essays written by Yiqi Zhang, a 30-year-old PhD Student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China, and Line Fryd Hofmansen, a 26-year-old Management Consultant at PA Consulting Group, Denmark, which won the second and third positions of the global maritime Essay Competition, were also considered as’’ world class’’.
Givwn an insider information, an official of the Global Maritime Forum disclosed that, the essence of the competition is to ‘’give students and young professionals between 18 and 30 years a voice in the debate about ‘’how the maritime industry can sustainably address maritime challenges and opportunities that would give the industry stakeholder a chance to listen.”
The winners of the competition were said to have won the chance to attend the Global Maritime Forum Annual Summit 2019 in Singapore, all expenses covered, together with 200 other world leaders both within the maritime and outside industry, where they will represent the voice of the young generations.
“The Future Maritime Leaders essay competition represents an invaluable opportunity for young people aspiring to become the leaders of the future to meet and engage with senior maritime stakeholders,” the Global Maritime Forum had said.
Maritime watchers believe that tersoo global maritime award in Singapore has raised the profile of NIMASA, particular, Peterside as a running a world class maritime driven Organisation where the Stff excel in the midst of their Contemporaries all over the world. Vintage Peterside.
