ATACA Holds Seminar at Maritime Academy Oron
Oru Leonard
The Abuja Transport and Aviation Correspondents’ Association (ATACA), held a Seminar at Oron in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, on Friday, June 21, 2019.
This is the third seminar held by the association since it was formed in 2016 and the first held outside the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
In her remarks, the Chairperson of ATACA, Mrs Taiye Edeni, noted that taking this year’s seminar out of Abuja was to help members see for themselves the infrastructural, curriculum and human capacity development the academy has undergone in the leadership and management team that was appointed by The Former Minister, Rt. Hon. Rotimi Chibike Amaech
According to her, “We organise the event annually and this time we took it outside Abuja in order to connect with other organisations and network with the outside world.
There is need for correspondents to experience and understand the environment and relative terms used in every segment of the sector they are covering”
The Chairman thanked the Rector Maritime Academy of Nigeria Oron , Commodore Duja Effedua, for facilitating the workshop and restated the association’s commitment towards moving the transport industry forward and correcting challenges faced in the sector through the power of the pen.
The Guest Lecturer, Rear Admiral Francis Akpan, a retired Senior Naval Officer, who specialised in strategic naval tactics for peace and war time as well as maintaining surveillance over national waters, spoke on the “Maritime Domain Awareness And the Nigerian Economy”
Admiral Akpan noted that Nigeria is a maritime state and the environmentalist input was key to National Development. He said that with the increased threats to Nigeria’s waters, there was need to emphasize and create networks in security collaborations for information sharing and operations at all levels, ”information must be shared at all levels, without encumbrance”, he emphasized.
He stressed on the need to reduce response time to today’s maritime operations and advised that the country should improve in the ability to track, detect, collate, fuse, analyse and disseminate information which is key to enhancing security and improving the economy through revenue from the maritime sector.
The Security Expert lamented the huge losses caused by vandalization of oil and gas and other products pipeline, as well as degradation of the environment and unregulated fishing, which he said amounted to about 10.9 million dollars in four years. He however commended the Nigerian Navy for the appreciable progress in securing Nigeria’s territorial waters through Maritime domain awareness.
Participants at the workshop expressed gratitude and satisfaction at the depth knowledge gained in the area of maritime security operations.
The theme of the workshop was, “The role of Maritime Sector in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals”.
