The founder of The Blue Economy Academy, Mr. Ubong Essien, said the newly launched institution was founded to educate people on the value and significance of the wealth embedded in Nigerian waters.
Addressing journalists over the weekend during a launch in Lagos, Essien said the academy, whose core vision is ‘Prosper by Water,’ aims at eliminating sea blindness and elevating awareness and engagement with ocean-centric opportunities.
He added that there is room for advocacy and getting policymakers and industry leaders to drive supportive policies during the course of running programmes in the academy.
Essein emphasised that if people know more about the sea, their minds expand, and they begin to interpret their skills.
According to him, the academy would run its programmes through ten buckets of prosperity, including blue commerce, bounty, cities, capital, governance and justice, nexus, climate, talent, ventures, and power.
Essien’s recent experience as Special Adviser on Strategy and Communications to the Director-General of NIMASA highlighted the immense potential of Nigeria’s maritime domain and the critical need for skilled professionals to drive its sustainable development.
“It is with this understanding that the academy was established,” he said.
“In Nigeria, we are largely sea blind. The level of awareness to appreciate the value in our waters is so tragically insignificant. Most people don’t even understand the dimensions of what we have. In our vision, we say we envision a Nigeria that prospers with water, and in terms of how we want to go about it, we want to eliminate sea blindness,” Essein added.
He said that Nigerians need to know that as a coastal nation, the waters affect them economically and across the world, what is meant by nationwide impact.
“We created this technology because, in the course of my research, I took some time to develop what would be the framework for how we empower people to do economic knowledge. That’s why we created these 10 buckets, and we’ll fetch from 10 buckets. We already have the facility in place. And we’re already building the faculty. It is going to be a faculty of what we call industry fellows,” Essien concluded.
