Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has handed over a multi-million-naira facility called ‘Centre of Excellence’ for specialised training in marine and offshore engineering to the Rivers State University (RSU), formerly Rivers State University of Science and Technology (RSUST).
The technology centre can allow ship builders to test the viability of the vessels at sea with a specialised machine and mock sea built at the university.
The centre was handed over Thursday, June 1, in Port Harcourt by the managing director of SPDC and country chairman of Shell Companies in Nigeria, Osagie Okunbor, to the vice chancellor of the renamed university, Blessing Didia, a professor of anatomy. This was done in the presence of the state governor and visitor of the university, Nyesom Wike, who was represented by the commissioner of education, a law professor, Kaniye Ebeku.
Okunbor said the facility was a product of collaboration that would help hone selected crop of post-graduate students in high training to be industry-ready. Insiders said the training would replace some of the foreign trainings that Nigerians sought abroad.
The centre is expected to train highly skilled masters degree holders in Marine Engineering (Power Plant), Naval Architecture, Offshore & Subsea Engineering, etc.
Okunbor “The critical foundation for this is the infrastructure which SPDC and its partners have provided with the delivery of this two-floor building and stocking it with the best of hydrodynamic equipment and accessories”. Students coming for these specialized studies must meet the minimum entry requirement of second class upper (3.8) in Marine Engineering.
Near the Centre lies the decaying building of another centre known as RACAM for advanced automobile engineering technology, which seems out of use, also built by industry-based partners. It seems to lack attention and sustainability but Shell CEO said sustainability mechanisms have been built into the Marine Engineering centre.
He said Shell would provide technical support and grant to run the sensitive centre, which would start operations early in 2018.
The VC, Didia, the RSU which is in the deltaic region of Nigeria has one of its objectives, to produce scientific and technical manpower of various levels needed for essential development, thus the need for the Centre of Excellence in Marine Engineering.
He reminded the guests that the UST (now RSU) was the first university in Nigeria to offer a degree in Marine Engineering and to produce the first African professor of Marine Engineering in the person of Kelvin D.H Bob-Manuel.
He said the motivation for the facility started when SPDC donated 120 specialized books an modern marine hydrodynamic laboratory equipment in 2007. He said the UST and SPDC had agreed to create such a facility should the building be constructed by the university. This was not done for over a decade, prompting SPDC to take over the task of providing the building to house the centre.
The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) and the Nigeria Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) showed interest in helping to sustain the new centre. Sibi Wobote of NCDMB and Abraham Lamah of NLNG said they would look into the centre for partnership.
Wobote in particular said the NCDMB was desirous of partnering with universities for likely human capacity centres. He said the board would compel oil companies not to send trainees abroad anymore in the area that the RSU centre could solve.
Speaking, the state governor industries have at last realized that they had a duty in infrastructural development in host communities and urged SPDC to do more. “This project will help RSU realize its entrepreneurial target. Unemployable graduates would become employable from this centre which will help to produce experts to man sensitive institutions in Nigeria. It is good that SPDC is not only donating and quitting but is staying to support its growth”. He called on the university management to treat the facility with sense of responsibility.
The GM, external relations of SPDC, Igo Weli, said he was glad that Ebeku and some others have started appreciating the huge support SPDC is pumping in the state and in the oil region. He mentioned the $6m modern library built by SPDC in the heart of Port Harcourt to promote reading culture, the many post graduate foreign scholarship for the best brains in the oil region, the annual secondary school scholarship and university scholarship that goes to Rivers and other states, let alone GMoU projects all over the region, mostly in Rivers state for which N3.8 billion was just released.
Weli said these were few of the many capital-intensive projects that SPDC executes in the state and region yearly, and argued that no company can do more than its financial capacity can carry. He appealed to the people of the region to create conducive condition for companies to operate and do more.
Ignatius Chukwu
