Navy Arrests 40 Pirates, Impounds 52 Vessels

The Nigerian Navy last Monday arrested over 40 pirates and seized 52 vessels for various alleged piracy related offences.
Flag Officer Commanding. (FOC), Western Naval Command, Rear Admirer Habila Ngalabak made this disclosure while speaking with newsmen during a seminar for the officers at the Nigerian Navy Ship NNS Quorra in Lagos.
He explained that the seminar which has the Theme,  ”maritime offences and procedures for arrest and detention of ships in Nigeria maritime environment” was to educate the officer’s to have a better understanding of procedure’s of arresting, detaining and prosecution of vessels”.
In a statement made available to The Tide, he said  the seminar was to refresh the minds of naval officers on the issues of arrest, detention and prosecution of vessels at sea.
The seminar, he said, could not have come at a better time than this because,we are approaching December, so we have to get ourselves alert on our duties. According to him, we have 52 vessels of different classes and types presently in our custody for different offences and quite a lot of them are under litigation and investigations.
“It is a situation that keeps on changing, there are some that have been arrested and their cases have been disposed off from the list and others are still joining”, he said.
He said, “It takes time for the prosecution to be concluded, so, some of them have been for three of four years. The FOC said in the last two to the months, there were major arrest of maritime offenders which are piracy related offences and within this period, the command arrested no fewer than 42 persons for one offence or the other.

By: Chinedu Wosu.