By Izuchukwu Ozoemena

Nigeria’s pioneer maritime journalists’ group, the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria (MARAN) has charged the Federal Government to take a second look at strategies on ground to address the nagging problem of oil theft and maritime insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) especially at a time achievements recorded in recent years to address the menace appear to be fading away as resurgence is now being witnessed.

MARAN President, Godfrey Bivbere made the call in Lagos, Wednesday, at a one-day MARAN Annual Conference on the theme “Maritime Security: Emerging Threats and Actionable Steps”.

In his welcome address, he pointedly charged Nigeria authorities and other countries in the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) to go back to the drawing board and design more lasting strategies that will ensure that a resurgence of the frightening occurrences is not witnessed, going forward.

“We challenge the Nigeria Government and her regional counterparts to come up with a more workable and result- oriented approach to the fight against maritime insecurity in the GoG. We believe that until and unless the international syndicates involved in the menace are confronted, apprehended and regularly exposed, through international collaboration as often happens with local criminals, the situation will not achieve any purposeful deterrence.

MARAN, he stated, is fully supportive of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his wisdom to establish the sector-specific Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy in response to stakeholders’ view that it is one major step to turn around the fortunes of the nation’s maritime domain for the greater good of the economy.

“We envisage that President Tinubu may consider reworking the deterrence clauses contained in the SPOMO Act, to make its intendment more purposeful and business-like.

“MARAN respectfully, wishes to further urge President Tinubu to provide an improved enabling environment for a common and united combat against maritime insecurity through effective harnessing of all available windows, both public and private sector participation.”

Bivbere said MARAN feels deeply pained that since the first half of 2023, piracy has resumed in the GoG. The enormous security threats is a reality the journalists’ body find unacceptable, making her to contribute in whatever way possible to create a public awareness that will ginger the government to design better ways to address a lingering menace.

MARAN, Bivbere said, acknowledge previous and current efforts by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Nigerian Navy and their regional counterparts to address issue of piracy and related maritime threats in the GOG. But the body is particularly concerned about the frightening level of crude oil theft in the region beside illegal and unregulated fishing in the GoG by highly-placed international syndicates who enjoy the assistance of local collaborators.

The Federal Government and her counterparts in the region owe everybody the responsibility to rise to the occasion and put a permanent stop to it.

“MARAN is also worried about observed dissonance in the collective national effort to combat maritime economic crimes and crude oil smuggling, and call on the federal government and its relevant agencies to improve on coordination. I want to also especially call on the office of the National Security Adviser to the President, to have a firmer grip and supervision of the existing collaboration between state and non-state actors’ roles, in this regard.

“The International Maritime Bureau, IMB report of July 2023 confirmed that the GoG witnessed a surge in maritime incidents in 2023, with five of such incidents in the first quarter and nine in the second quarter. Out of these, 12 were classified as armed robberies and two as piracy, predominantly targeting anchored vessels within the region. In all the incidents, 14 crew members were kidnapped, out of which 8 were abducted from vessels on anchor. Additionally, in two separate hijacks, 31 crew members were taken hostage, communication and navigation equipment were destroyed, and some cargoes were stolen.”

Speaking at the event, Temi Omatseye, former Director-General of NIMASA observed that many illegal vessels operate on Nigerian waters. He advised that Nigeria should begin to issue ship entry notices to vessels before leaving or arriving at anchor.

“We should know who you are or where you are on Nigerian waters. We must stop playing politics with the shipping industry.”

“We should set up a Restore Zone Transportation Corridor to spot vessels moving in and out of the approved nautical areas. It enables Nigeria to know who is in her maritime territory.”

He emphasized that there is no crude theft in Nigeria. Whatever happens is at the terminals.”

In his intervention, Sesan Onileimo, notable maritime journalist and former President of MARAN attributed majority of issues of crude oil theft and piracy taking place in Nigerian waters to youth unemployment. Onileimo who publishes Shipping Position said that the maritime threats happening in the Niger Delta are rampant and will continue to be rampant as long as the system keeps churning out a large army of able-bodied but unemployed youths who easily become a willing tool in the hands of godfathers who sponsor piracy, crude oil theft and other maritime crimes in the Gulf of Guinea.

He described crude oil theft and piracy as a localized business because people from other geographic areas who are not versed in aquatic business as their counterparts in the Niger Delta cannot make a success when they venture in them.

“There’s a mass of unemployed youths that the society has foisted on us; an idle hand is a willing tool.”

“And I will like to look at this from two angles. There are two categories of unemployed willing youths: the ones trained by NIMASA under its National Seafarers’ Development Programme who were trained, qualified with or without Certificate of Competency (CoC) but waiting to have something to do. They are there, they want to be active, they are the tools that are being used to forment trouble.

“The second leg are those boys and girls who are trained locally, some of them are trained at MAN, Oron, but there are those that are trained even in Agege here who wear uniforms so much so like that of the Navy. They are equipped and recruited into that business that has turned out to be a source of threat to our maritime environment.

“I am saying this because in the course of my years as a maritime journalist, I have had cause to interact with a few of them. If you go to Liverpool here, I am sure the Maritime Workers’ Union will bear me witness; the boys and girls who graduated from Oron, who have turned out to be canoe boys, were not trained in Oron to be handling canoe and boats but there is no job for them. These are the same boys who had five years of training but afterwards, there is no job. Take that guy to Niger-Delta, he is ready to do anything for as long as the money is available”, Onileimo explained.

Adding his voice, Otumba Sola Adewunmi, President, Nigerian Indigenous Shipowners Association, (NISA) advised Nigeria as a country to work hard to have a safe sea where one could sail to wherever he wanted to do his business and safely come back. Adewunmi who suggested putting in place a Nigerian equivalent of the P&I oof Singapore observed that there was so much competition at sea, the equipments are there but with inefficient, uncommitted and inexperienced people to man them.

For instance, he stated,

the Navy’s situation room known as the Falcon Eye, captures and displays everything that happens at sea. But a selfish agenda, he regrets, often lead to inefficiency in job discharge.

“There’s nothing that happens at sea that they don’t see but you will realize that most of our security agents are engrossed with what will come into their pockets. A situation whereby they do everything to their advantage is one of the reasons we are having issues.

“What did Lome have that we do not have in Nigeria?This is the question we should just ask ourselves. These people saw our weakness and made sure that their anchorage was secure. It attracts international operators and they started making money out of it. What is the work of our security agencies? And even when arrests are made, are they not made on frivolous excuses? All these things still go to say what is going to be the benefit to me.

“Until we put the benefit of the nation and what the nation will earn overall, I think we are in a better position to protect our waters very well but this era of entitlement, ‘it is our entitlement, we must get it’, I think it is part of the issues that we have. And as much as these things are there, we will continue to have a higher cost of bringing vessels to this place.”

He opined that if the security agents could work together and there is a good judicial system, Nigeria can achieve a lot.

In his contribution, Capt Tajudeen Alao, President, National Association of Master Mariners (NAMM) stated that maritime crime being a big business whose tentacles spread across the globe cannot be perceived as a Nigerian thing. He advised the participants at the lecture to sit down as a group, brainstorm and come up with workable proceedings that could be presented to the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy to implement.

“Whatever we think is the right thing to do, there must be procedures and guidelines and once the Minister can make subsidiary legislation, it could go a long way in tackling most of these challenges. The trend now is, if you arrest a ship now engaging in illegal bunkering, you blow it up, does it make sense? The air pollution into the sky, the oil pollution into the ecosystem, you have destroyed the fish and periwinkles in that area.

“There are many things that we do. Like my colleague said, you arrest a ship, EFCC doesn’t know how to manage ship. The ship is there, they are waiting for the Police to go to court, the ship becomes a wreck, then, NPA and NIMASA will devote $2 million to salvage a ship that does not worth more than $300,000.”

He insisted that a deliberate action and political must exist before crime can be addressed.

“The Navy”, the NAMM boss continued, “cannot afford to fund maritime security just as it cannot afford to keep the ships at sea with the budget within its disposal”.

“It finds it comfortable relying on the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, (NIMASA) to fund most of its operations”.