The Nigeria Merchant Navy Officers and Water Transport Senior Staff Association has said that one Mr. Lawan Ali arrested by the security operatives last week was not a member of the association as claimed by the Nigerian Navy.
It will be recalled that the Nigerian Navy last week paraded Ali who was arrested for hijacking a truck laddened with petroleum product with a Nigerian Navy uniform claiming to be an ex-Naval Officer that was dismissed from the Navy few years ago.
Also recall that the Nigerian Navy after interrogating the suspect came out to inform the public that the uniform used by the suspect in carrying out the alleged crime was not that of the Nigerian Navy as reported but that of the Nigerian Merchant Navy Officers.
But in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos on Tuesday, the Assistant Secretary-General of the Nigerian Merchant Navy Officers and Water Transport Senior Staff Association, Comrade John Aleakhue Okpono disowned the suspect saying that he was not their member.
Okpono stated that the association had taken time to go through its register of members and found no such name as Lawan Ali in its register adding that the association had never admitted its members through recruitment as claimed by the said suspect.
According to him,” again, that story said he was recruited into the Nigerian Navy in 2005 but we Merchant Navy, we don’t recruit. Now, what makes you a merchant Navy officer is your ability to learn on the job or you go through a maritime institution. We don’t recruit, there is no exercise we call recruitment in Merchant Navy because it has to do with merchant. To be a merchant means that you are to be employed but if you call it recruitment, it is not recruitment that has to do with number or year of recruitment as was stated in the publication”.
“That man is not our member and we hereby denounce that he is not our member and of course, here as Directorate, we don’t sow uniform but we know our uniform, we did not give that man any uniform. So, the man in question, Lawan Ali is not our member. The Navy should go and trace where that man got his uniform”.
“You have been coming to this office, I stand to be corrected, you have not seen any tailor measuring anybody here or anybody buying our uniform here. We don’t sell our uniform but that does not mean we don’t know our uniform”.
He disclosed that the association had warned its members who are interested in wearing the uniform to ensure that they do that only on official engagement and not to wear them as to abuse them and bring the association to disrepute.
“We said, if you want to use uniform, most often use it in the vessel you work or you have a social gathering. There is a uniform for social gathering, there is uniform for relaxation. It varies and we go by the same colour. If it is rough, it is brown, when it settles down, it is white and blue. These are the three colours that Merchant Navy wears’, he said.
On his part, the Secretary-General of the association, Comrade Julius Efiokpor bemoan the attitude of the Nigerian Navy in passing the bulk to the association whenever it involves negative publicity against the Navy reminding the Navy that the suspect in question confessed that he was recruited into the Nigerian Navy wondering why the Navy was shifting the blame on the association.
“You see, what the Navy had succeeded in doing is to pull the burden out of them and pass the bulk to the Merchant Navy. Anybody can claim to be a merchant navy officer until we get to the database, that is the only way we prove whether he is our member or not”.
“So, as far as we are concerned, there is no reason for us to check the uniform. If they are sure of what they are saying, they should bring that man here to verify in the office if he is our member”, he said.
