Harboursandport.com: Lagos - The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) have been charged to create job opportunities for over 70 percent of seafarers that are jobless to prevent them from becoming willing recruitment candidates for piracy and sea robbery in the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) as well as on Nigerian waterways.
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The call was made by the Merchant seafarers under the aegis of the Merchant Seafarers
Association of Nigeria (MESAN) described as a political statement meant to score a political point recent
claim by NIMASA that piracy attacks have reduced by 40 percent in the GoG as
well as on Nigerian waters.
MESAN
attributed the reduction of piracy to the level of attacks
on the waterways because of the approach deployed by the current Chief of Naval
Staff, the level of attacks on the waterways because of the approach deployed by
the current Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Auwwal Zuberu Gambo.
Secretary-General of MESAN, Capt Alfred Oluwasegun
Oniye who disclosed this in Lagos, commended Gambo for being one of the best
CNS Nigeria has ever produced because he employed political solution to the
problem of attacks on the waterways.
“However, when it comes to welfare, seafarers are
not happy at all, more of them are losing their jobs.
I don’t see why NIMASA cannot come up with a good policy that would make the
foreigners leave our jobs; they have dominated our waterways and taken jobs
belonging to Nigerians.
“About 70% of Nigerian seafarers are still jobless,
this doesn’t speak well, and those that have the job are not even well paid,
they are being given peanuts and they are still owed salaries, NIMASA is not
doing anything about this.
“How do you think the seafarers would
be happy? They are not happy at all.
“We have cases
in our office, we wrote NIMASA severally, at a point we had to take it upon
ourselves and we went to court. We have such cases in court; we cannot fold our
hands and watch these guys go through hell.
“How can you
keep a family man at sea for five months and you won’t pay him a salary? Not only
that, their pensions are being deducted and it is not being remitted to the
appropriate authorities, where are these monies going? We have evidence
like that, but we are trying to get justice before bringing it to the media
“We are not
collecting money from these seafarers, we are just protecting their rights
under the law, and we took it upon ourselves as a responsibility.
“Piracy has reduced, for now, the challenges we are grappling with is the welfare and unemployed seafarers, and if this area is not tackled, the Piracy would come back” he warned.
Capt Oniye stated that the unemployment of professionals and seafarers is the baseline for the insecurities on the waterways.
He said the
perpetrators are only seizing fire for now, based on political grounds, but
that they are bouncing back again anytime soon.
According to
him, the seize fire is political; it is not that appropriate measures have been
put in place by the government.
Speaking
further, he said “Piracy has reduced by 40% politically and not drastically.
We must commend the current Chief of Naval Staff; he is one of the best that
the Navy has ever had.
“It is not
that there was an attack before as such, it was a political thing, there is no
crime carried out in this industry that is not organized, so the crime on
Nigerian waterways is an organized crime.
“You cannot
steal crude oil for example, without carrying the security officials along;
even those hijacking vessels cannot succeed, so it is an organized crime.
“When the CNS
came on board, he warned that any officer that gets himself involved in any
criminal activities, he would deal with them seriously.
“He was able
to do this because he is one of the CNS that has not soiled his hands, I can
say it emphatically, he has a clean record and he knows that the problem is an
organized crime.
“You cannot
commit any crime on that waterway without the involvement of the security
agencies, he has warned them to withdraw completely and we can now see the
results.
“Government
has not done anything new; they have not put any measure in place that is new
to what we know before.
“Forget the
international collaboration with foreign navies; they cannot know our waterways
like we do.
“I commend the
present CNS because sometimes, using combat measures to stop crime might not be
the best action, sometimes; you have to make peaceful moves.
“This is what
the CNS has done, he knows those involved, and he knows how to call them to
order, he has applied a good military strategy, making peace is better than
combat.
“If the boys
have decided to seize fire, and yet you don’t give them jobs to replace the
criminal work, they would go back to the piracy job” he warned
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