A frontline maritime lawyer, Barr. Osuala Emmanuel Nwagbara has called on the federal government to provide the Nigerian Navy with the necessary platforms needed to enable it curb the excesses of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea region.
Nwagbara who made this call in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos recently stated that if the request by the Navy for provision of platforms for it by the federal government was hearkened to, it would stem the tide of calls for private security outfit as exemplified in the request for MASECA Bill.
He believed that piracy is better fought with the Nigerian Navy and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) Maritime Guard Command than with any other security outfit either in existence or yet to be established, if they were well equipped.
“If we have a Navy that is very empowered with all the platforms that they need to fight piracy, I am sure that if piracy is subdued by our Navy, there won’t be any need for calls for another maritime agency to fight piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and I as a person believe that piracy is better fought with Navy and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency Maritime Guard Command.
“In spite of the fact that Global West is no more in place, I believe that Maritime Guard Command working with the Navy can fight piracy to a standstill. It is still an issue but I think that the steps taken then had a very big impact even up till now because pirates now know that NIMASA can fight them to a standstill”, he said.
Looking back to the fight against piracy in the Gulf of Guinea in the past eight years, Nwagbara who is also the Managing Partner of the Maritime and Commercial Law Partners recalled that about 2010 to 2012, the world focused attention to the Gulf of Guinea and Nigeria in particular because of the country’s big time role in the region being the largest importer which meant that highest number of vessels called at its ports saying that it was very apposite that the world focus attention on Nigeria talking about Gulf of Guinea.
He further recalled that the administration of Akpobolokemi in NIMASA then stepped up attack on piracy such that for the first time, pirates were confronted adding that that bold decision instill fears on pirates even as he said that the Maritime Guard Command was at the height of its operation.
While expressing some reservations about the Global West Vessels Specialists’ contract that birthed the operation, he however said that its operation was very impactful.
In his words, “For the first time, pirates were given the fight of their lives, a number of arrests were made, although they were bungled at prosecution because there was no statutory power given to NIMASA to prosecute as an agency, secondly, there was no law at that time and even now that addressed piracy as a crime within the Nigerian federation and therefore, what happened was that pirates were caught and handed over to the DSS for prosecution, some were handed over to the EFCC for prosecution and economic crimes were used as a window to get them into the net of a crime to be able to prosecute them and at the end of the day, most of the prosecution was bungled and many of them were let go. In fact, almost all of them were let go because we can’t talk of any conviction as we speak.
“But there was a huge impact in the Gulf of Guinea on piracy within the Nigerian waters because there was a very big drop. Unfortunately, that impact was mellowed down after the Akpobolokemi era, in the sense that Global West outfit became moribund and we had to devise other ways of tackling piracy, they had to rely solely on the Navy and the Navy is also crying that it doesn’t have the necessary platform while doing its best in the fight against piracy, it is also calling on government to give it the necessary platform to fight piracy. We are looking at government hearkening to this request of the Nigerian Navy so that this call for private security outfit in the name of the request for MASECA Bill would be put in abeyance”.
On the Maritime Security contract awarded to an Israeli firm, the legal practitioner said that to the best of his knowledge, the contract was not meant to hand over security of the Nigerian waters to a foreign firm rather for the firm to provide security surveillance and pass the information to the Nigerian Navy for necessary action.
“If that is designed to have them work with the Navy to fill the gap that we don’t have at the level of security surveillance, I don’t have any issues with that if they are only coming to add strength to our Navy working with our Navy. But I don’t think that the much I read suggested to me that we are handing over our maritime domain to be secured by Israelis. Our Navy is still in-charge of our waters, that is the much I know”, he added.
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