Piracy On Watersways Worries NIMASA

The Nigerian Maritime Administrative and Safety Agency
(NIMASA), has called on stakeholders to address the problem of sea robbers and
piracy on Nigerian waters.

NIMASA Director of
Shipping and development, Capt. Wareedi Enisuoh, made the call in Lagos at a
stakeholders’ forum on how to address the hijacking and armed sea robbers’
attack on fishing trawlers.

Enisuoh said that some of the ways to eradicate  the activities of sea robbers and the
hijackers of fishing trawlers was to improve safety on the Nigeria waters.

“It is our natural resource; we have the responsibility to
protect it, and as well have the responsibility to ensure that it works”,
Enisuoh said.

According to him, pirates are sea robbers who prey on ships
and rob them of their goods and sometimes capture the ship itself for their own
personal use.

“This problem has been with us ever since commerce took to
the oceans, which of course is more than 2000 years ago.

“The Vikings “Sea Raider” actually earned their name from
crimes such as this.

“They were renowned for attacking ships and coastal towns
and ended up being the founding fathers of modern day Britain,” he said.

Also, Alhaji Inuwa Danladi, technical Director of NIGCOMSAT,
said that Nigeria communication satellite would enable the navy to network its
warships, submarines and aircraft with operational centres ashore, through
high-speed data link.

“We have massive land bodering the sea and we also have a
lot of ocean tributaries, we can install security cameras which have high
zooming capacity along the landmass.

“This is for surveillance in our coastal areas, which
happened to be areas of high security threat and interest”.

He said that National Public Security Communciation System
(NPSCS) would be used by the Nigerian Police under the supervision of NIGCOMSAT
as network integrated security agent.

Alhaja Bola Kupolati, Director of Federal Department of
Fisheries, said that the numbers of registered and actually operating ships
have decreased fast from 265 ships in 2008, to 139 in 2012.

Kupolati said that the problems were direct consequences of
the lack of effective surveillance patrol.