Maritime
SON, Navy Set To Return To Seaports
The Nigerian Navy Service (NNS) says it is planning to return to the nation’s seaports after 30 years.
The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo, made the disclosure during a webinar to mark the 100 days of Service Chiefs in office, last week.
Gambo said the NNS has discovered that years after it left the task of monitoring incoming goods and persons for the officials of the Nigerian Customs and Immigration Services, there is high proliferation of illegal arms in the country.
He said the return of the NNS to the nation’s seaport became imperative to correct the anomaly at the seaports and to effectively secure the county’s sea borders against influx of light weapons.
“We have realised that arms are circulating indiscriminately and their effects are devastating. Our efforts in combating their proliferation must therefore be viewed as contributing to the good, rather than a zero-sum game.
“We are pushed by the fact that killing and neutralising of terrorists while these weapons still flow in will do us no good.
“This is because the right to life and the right to live in freedom and dignity are rights that all Nigerians must uphold in various fora”, he said.
The Naval boss said the Navy was working with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to establish port commandant at the seaports.
Similarly, the management of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) says its return to the seaports would help it check the influx of substandard products into the country.
Director General, SON, Farouk Salim, said, “We are supposed to ensure that the borders and the ports are monitored properly, and in doing this we protect the country from substandard goods.
“One of such ways is to make sure that the employees of SON are in the point of entry in the country, especially the Lagos port where majority of goods comes into this country.
“Our people can be efficient if we are allowed to work at the point of entry of these goods, but right now we are not allowed at the ports.
“They allow us once in a while to check goods but that should not be the way, because SON as an organisation should not depend on the kindness of other organisations to do its work.”