Naval chief blames insiders for sea piracy

 

Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Dele Ezeoba, says insiders are involved in incessant attacks on ships in Nigerian waters, especially in the Niger Delta region.

Ezeoba said this in Brass, Bayelsa State, while reacting to the recent attack on Marshal Island-flagged vessel, MT. ALCHE; and the abduction of a Ukrainian captain and a Greek engineer by pirates off the coast of Brass.

Besides, the Niger Delta region has continued to witness kidnapping of expatriates for ransom despite huge amount of money spent in the amnesty programme granted the region’s former agitators.

In most cases, the companies were forced to pay large amount of money as ransom to rescue their employees from the kidnappers’ den.

Not long ago, a company was said to have parted with N55m to free two of its expatriates seized by gunmen in the creeks of Amasoma, Southern Ijaw Local Government Area of Bayelsa State.

A security source, who pleaded anonymity, said the firm that owned MT. ALCHE had intensified negotiations with the pirates to free the Ukrainian and the Greek.

But Ezeoba said investigations of similar incidents in the past by the navy indicated that some crew members working for companies’ ships gave out information about the locations of their vessels to pirates.

The Naval Chief, who spoke shortly after inaugurating the Maritime Regional Awareness Capability centre, assured Nigerians that the Navy was dealing with the situation.

Ezeoba said, “If you take a proper census of what had happened from investigations, you will discover that that vessel that this incident occurred upon must have had insiders on board the vessel itself who would have collaborated with this bad guys on land for that incident to have occurred.

“I am talking from point of experience and history of past cases that we have investigated. So we are dealing with it. But as long as you have the society that has human beings, you continue to have these challenges and we will continue to deal with it.”