Maritime Insecurity’s Threatening Nigeria’s Economic Development – CNS

The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Sa’ad Ibrahim has said that Nigeria’s maritime security and economic development are under serious threats due to the inadequate presence of Nigerian Navy at sea.
 He said that the Nigerian Navy was faced with steep operational decline arising from aged fleet, and obsolete and decaying support infrastructure that made it almost impossible to check the threats.

The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Sa’ad Ibrahim has said that Nigeria’s maritime security and economic development are under serious threats due to the inadequate presence of Nigerian Navy at sea.
 He said that the Nigerian Navy was faced with steep operational decline arising from aged fleet, and obsolete and decaying support infrastructure that made it almost impossible to check the threats.
 Ibrahim, who disclosed this at a seminar in Abuja to mark the 2012 Navy Week, maintained that the Nigerian Navy had not regained the lost glory of its humble beginning and the formidable regional maritime powers of the 70′s and 80′s that gave the country pride.
 He declared that regrettably, “the Nigerian Navy is today on a steep operational decline due to numerous challenges, even as he regretted that,” conversely, emerging maritime security challenges like piracy, pipeline vandalism, crude oil theft, illegal bunkering, militancy and threats of terrorist attacks on the nation’s critical offshore installations are on the rise daily and assuming unprecedented sophistication and dimension, largely due to inadequate presence of the NN at sea.”
 The Chief of Naval Staff said there was urgent need to reposition the Navy, to enable her rise to the occasion and nip existing and emerging threats in the bud before they assume catastrophic dimensions with huge attendant costs in human and material losses.
 While drawing attention to the grave situation, CNS warned that “we must not forget that Nigeria derives about 90 percent of her foreign exchange earnings from oil and gas in our maritime environment.”
 The import, he added, was that other developments, including the Vision 20:20:20 and the Transformation Agenda, largely depended on the resources from the maritime environment.