Gboyega Akinsanmi
11 January 2009
opinion
Lagos — Year 2008 was gorier and more horrible for Nigeria's fishing industry. Like the previous year, 2009 too promises dim (perhaps little) hope with the seizure of a French ship off Nigerian shore last week. This simply resulted from the increased spate of piracy and armed robbery attacks at sea that now pose major threats on national security and development. This has forced the industry to cut jobs by 50 per cent in the last eight years. With its 500,000 employees and above (both skilled and unskilled), it still stands the risk of cutting more jobs if the attacks continue.
On investigation during the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Naval surveillance team discovered an oil firm around Westminster, Lagos that devised its own pipe with 12 nooses, and welded with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) pipeline. By inference, when oil products are pumped via the NNPC pipelines, its metre will read far less than the quantity originally pumped from the source, thus leading to major revenue loss to private purses at the expense of the public welfare.
According to the report, this is a practice among almost all oil companies in Nigeria, and the implication is tremendous with collateral loss in revenue. This simply means when the NNPC metre reads 300 litres of oil products pumped, more than 1200 litres have already been pumped into the private tanks. Sad enough, these illegal activities are perpetrated in Nigeria's internal waters with impunity.
The oil industry too is not exclusive. While piracies and armed attacks affect their operations, intelligence reports from the naval formation reveal that most oil companies that operate private jetties are involved in different criminal activities. In this case, some vessels berth within Nigeria's territorial waters without proper clearance, while others operate ships that are not registered with regulatory authorities.
Nigeria's territorial waters indeed represent a domain without a government and order given the manners foreign vessels operate within her maritime jurisdiction without clearance from such regulatory authorities like Nigerian Customs Service (NSC), Nigerian Navy (NN) and Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA). But investigation reveals that this was possible with the help of maritime agents.
The Inter-Agency Maritime Security Task Force (IAMSTF) revealed this development during its surveillance exercise last December. During its patrol of Nigeria's internal waters, the task force boarded MT Westaf and MT Ocean Pearls, both of which arrived Nigeria's waters without due clearance on October 25, 2008 and November 4, 2008 respectively. This portends a wide range of development and security challenges if strategic decisions are directed at taming increasing illegal activities in Nigeria's waters.
Apparently, a number of factors are responsible for the ungoverned nature of Nigeria's territorial waters. As pointed out at the IAMSFT sitting, the naval force is ill-equipped for effective sea-basing campaign, though it has skilled and sufficient manpower required for a secure and safe maritime environment. Aside, it is observed that there is a strong link between Nigeria's oil firms and maritime agents and foreign partners from such countries like Ukraine, Russia, Philippines and China among others.
Further observation shows that friction between (or among) maritime-related forces form another factor of Nigeria's porous maritime environment, and has hindered best maritime practices such as information sharing, joint task force and periodic review of maritime security challenges with a view to devising new method of effective sea-basing patrol and surveillance of the country's internal waters. A recent intelligence report confirmed that these factors account for her unsafe maritime domain.
This has, according to the report, culminated in a sustained regime of security threats. For such Nigeria's foreign partners as the United States, it is terrorism, which costs huge revenue loss. In its recent report, Nigerian Trawlers Owner Association (NITOA) simply puts that the rising spates of pirate activities, sea robberies, poaching and other illegal operations in Nigeria's territorial waters and seas (with exception of illegal oil in the Niger Delta region) bunkering have cost Nigeria more than N23 billion in less than four years. This includes the cost of vessels and trawlers the pirates damaged.
Acknowledged in the report presented to the task force, the industry apparently has lost lives, valuable equipment, vessels and fish products valued over N3 billion with an overall loss of all components valued N20 billion in less than four years. The report highlighted that the pirates recently progressed "in their style of operation by hijacking vessels with demands for huge ransom and threat of blowing the captured vessels with explosives if the company failed to pay as demanded."
More recently, vessels have been hijacked and ransoms demanded by payment into accounts in some banks before the release of crew members held hostages. Efforts directed at seeking the assistance of these banks (to get details of the account owners) were proved abortive because the banks refused the request on the questions of best practice and ethics. This thus reveals how best practice in one sector encourages bad practice, and a major weakness of the country's laws, acts and edicts deny release of account details.
In the case of illegal bunkering, intelligence report shows that Nigeria is losing a quarter of her daily oil production to uncertified bunkers. This means Nigeria incurs an annual loss of more than $2 billion to illegal oil dealing and $340 million to illegal fishing and poaching. In effect, this has a lot of implications for socio-economic development and poses tremendous threat to Nigeria's sovereign power. But experts hold that Nigeria "is losing far more than these amounts in actual sense." With criminal activities and insurgencies, it is believed that Nigeria perhaps loses half of her annual oil revenue to different kinds of illegal activities and operations at sea.
Another intelligence report, though not linked to the naval force revealed that there were about 250 registered fishing trawlers in Nigeria according to 2003/2004 record operated by over 40 fishing companies. But it claimed that the number of trawlers and companies "has reduced by 50 per cent within five years alone." Its findings show that 19 fishing companies are now operating with just 170 vessels. The issue of piracy and sea robberies has contributed immensely to this drastic reduction and if allowed to continue will lead to total collapse of the fishing industry in the country. The implication will lead to about 500,000 job cuts and huge loss of revenue if the government "fails to address the issue without fear and favour."
When appeared before the IAMSTF panel last December, NITOA President, Mrs Margaret Orakwusi cited six major hot zones in Nigeria's territorial waters. This includes Lagos-Lekki axis, Awoye-Aiyetoro-Benin River, Escravous-Forcados-Ramos-Dodo, Fishtown-Brass-Bartholomew-Barbara area, Sombreiro-Bonny-BOT/Andoni-Opobo region and Qua Iboe/Calabar/Rio Del Rey. But Sombreiro was ranked first in terms of sophistication of attacks and vessel hijacking, while the happening in Escravous and Forcados represents an example of ferocious attacks with the use of sophisticated weapons and arsenals. Other hot zones are equally labeled 'No-Go Area.'
Orakwusi also identified Badagry and Bakassi Peninsula as Nigeria's maritime domains where the cases of pirate attacks and sea robberies "are very recurrent. In the last quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008, the attacks became more rampant resulting in the death of several crew members." In the maritime regions cited, the 12-man task force was told that Nigeria's fishing industry, equally like other stakeholders in the maritime sector at large, had witnessed at least 293 documented sea robberies and pirate attacks between 2003 and 2008 which she said had culminated in loss of lives and destruction of vessels and trawlers.
This grim situation informed a submission that the pirates, illegal bunkers, foreign vessels, arms traffickers and drug dealers "operate unchallenged in Nigeria's internal waters." Pirate attacks have continued to even with the deployment of security forces, and the assurance of safety given by the government to the industry. Key factors that spur the illegal and criminal acts include ill security capacity and bad maritime governance. Some internal interests are aiding and abetting all these illicit activities of individual and corporate bodies (both domestic and foreign) within Nigeria's maritime jurisdiction.
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