UPDATE: National Assembly receives over 6000 petitions from Maritime Academy of Nigeria

The House Committee on Maritime Safety, Education and Administration have revealed that more than 6000 petitions from the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron in Akwa Ibom State are currently before it at the National Assembly.

This is even as the Committee issued a 30days revocation ultimatum to all contractors handling various abandoned projects at the academy.

Disclosing this over the weekend during its oversight visit to the academy, the
Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Mohammed Umaru Bago, urged the management of the academy to

pay all outstanding debts to contractors and asked that contractors should be asked to return to the site, failure to do so after 30days, such contract should be revoked.

According to Bago, “I will encourage you to call all contractors of the abandoned project for an interaction. Pay all outstanding debts to contractors and ask them to return to the site. Any contractor that refuses to return to the site after 30days, revoke such contracts.

“Then, any work that is done without drawing, delegate your works department to get drawings on such jobs so that it can be maintained and refurbished because some of the buildings that you have cannot be used.

“You don’t need to have thousands of buildings that are empty.

“On the issue of workers aiding some host communities to tap electricity power from the academy, any staff found to be doing such, please before you arrest such staff, first sack him or her. Because when you sack such person, he is no longer a staff, so you now arrest the person as a criminal.

“It is wrong to tap power from a generator that has just 100KVA capacity. Imagine a generator meant to service a building, some people in connivance with some of the academy staff tap electric power from it to a village, how can such generator last long? This is pure wickedness.

“On ongoing projects, I have told you that all works officers of the academy must be working together on the academy’s projects. Architects should look at architectural designs of projects, engineers must look at engineering designs of projects. Projects should not just be left for contractors. Its because people are not busy, that is why they have time for gossips.

“When I went to NIMASA, I told them that if I receive any petition from anybody, I will come to the agency and announce the name of the petitioner. The same thing will apply here. If anybody writes petition here, I will come and call the person to come and defend his or her petition.

“I have more than 6000 petitions from this academy alone on my desk. And most of the petitions are unfounded. I don’t have time for your petitions, people must change.”