THE Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, CIIN, said that it is putting modalities in place to tackle the quest for foreign certification in insurance risk management.
President of CIIN, Mr. Eddie Efekoha, who made this statement at a media parley in Lagos, noted that the Institute has identified infrastructural challenge as the bane in quality insurance education and degree programme in Nigeria, adding that the Institute is working to address the challenges.
Efekoha stated: “When we talk about advancing insurance education, we must talk about infrastructural development because by solving our infrastructural challenges, Nigerians won’t have to seek degrees in insurance risk management outside the country. Part of the efforts towards achieving this aim is an ongoing collaboration with Nigerian universities on inclusive masters’ degree programmes.
“We have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, with the University of Lagos for a Master’s degree programme (in the discipline) and soon it will kickoff. We believe that it will be a new phase for the institute and the country as we will no longer have to go to London, the US to obtain a masters degree for insurance and risk management.”
Efekoha mentioned that even the National Insurance Commission, NAICOM, was not left out in the pursuit towards this aim saying, “The Commission, as part of its commitment, set aside N15 million in rebuilding the Institute’s auditorium because to achieve a better insurance education, infrastructure must be put at the forefront and recognized as a necessary measure to driving the sector.”
He explained that having a standard auditorium would pave way for a positive growth for the Institute adding: “By the time the auditorium is completed, more students would have enrolled in the institution. I won’t be surprised that the coming years would be better than the previous years because of improved facilities.”
According to him, the initiative will be taken beyond the western part of the country adding, “We are on student membership drive, and we are taking insurance education to National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, camps in the different parts of the country as a means of extending the institution to the young ones and recruiting them young so that as soon as they are concluding their service programme, they are seeing the need to apply for CIIN programmes.”
