Piracy will increase in the Gulf of Guinea as Nigeria prepares for an election next February in order to funnel ransom money into campaign financing, intelligence experts told a shipping conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday.
Risk Intelligence, which advises private shipping companies and governments on security, said two "mother ships" belonging to pirates are currently located just south of Nigeria and five seafarers are know to be held hostage onshore.
Piracy will increase in the Gulf of Guinea as Nigeria prepares for an election next February in order to funnel ransom money into campaign financing, intelligence experts told a shipping conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday.
Risk Intelligence, which advises private shipping companies and governments on security, said two "mother ships" belonging to pirates are currently located just south of Nigeria and five seafarers are know to be held hostage onshore.
"Ahead of general elections, kidnap-for-ransom and attacks on offshore targets increase," Managing Director Hans Tino Hansen told Reuters at a special session on maritime crime and the effects on growth and development in Africa.
"The 'principal' (protection money) system in Nigeria secures funding to political candidates, and because of that, we see an increase in offshore attacks," he said.
General elections are expected to take place also in Togo, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast, all close to the Gulf of Guinea, but these do not constitute the same risk, the experts said.
"The crisis in the Gulf of Guinea is all about Nigeria," Alex Vines from Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International affairs, told the session.
The Danish Shipowners Association, representing companies that account for 10 percent of global trade by value, estimates global costs related to piracy at $28 billion a year due to lower trade volumes and the direct cost to companies and governments at $7 billion and $12 billion a year.
Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world's largest container shipping company, was one of the victims when the Maersk Alabama was attacked by Somali pirates in 2009, an incident made famous by the Hollywood movie "Captain Phillips".
The number of attacks by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden has dropped sharply from 2013, largely because of an international naval effort. As a result many shipping companies have cut spending on their security.
"We have seen some shipping companies reduce numbers of guards on merchant vessels from four to two when passing through the Indian Ocean," Hansen said, expecting some to take guards off vessels entirely in the near future, which could then increase the risk of a resurgence in piracy.
A total of 6,752 incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships, including attempted attacks, were reported from 1984 to the end of December 2013.
Apart from the seas east and west of Africa, pirates mainly operate in the Malacca Strait between Malaysia and Indonesia and in the South China Sea.
…In the presentation at the conference held at Clipper House, Copenhagen, Hansen stated that West African maritime security challenges were much more complicated than in East Africa.
He disclosed that 71 per cent of all piracy-related incidents in the Gulf of Guinea were directly related to Nigerian crime, while even more are originating in Nigeria.
“Up to the elections in February 2015, there is a risk of a relatively high level of kidnap and ransom cases,” he said.
“In the Horn of Africa, it was believed that 2015 will look a lot like 2014 with a very low level of pirate activity, but beyond 2015 it is not known if the decrease in naval operations combined with a reduction of measures implemented by the shipping industry may result in higher levels of piracy again as the capability, intent and opportunity is still in place,” he added.
He told the conference that two “mother ships” belonging to pirates are currently located just south of Nigeria and five seafarers are known to be held hostage onshore.
The experts at the conference noted that a general election is expected to take place also in Togo, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast, all close to the Gulf of Guinea, but these do not constitute the same risk.
Alex Vines from Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International affairs, told the session that “the crisis in the Gulf of Guinea is all about Nigeria.”
The Danish Shipowners Association, representing companies that account for 10 percent of global trade by value, estimates global costs related to piracy at $28 billion a year due to lower trade volumes and the direct cost to companies and governments at $7 billion and $12 billion a year.
Though worldwide piracy incidents declined in 2013, the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) International Maritime Bureau (IMB) had raised the alarm that the number of incidents in West Africa had remained the same, warning that they were becoming increasingly dangerous.
“In West Africa, the overall incidents haven’t drastically changed, but what is significantly different is that the number of incidences reported for Nigeria has increased,” Assistant Director of ICC International Maritime Bureau, Cyrus Mody, was quoted by International Business Times as saying.
“The distances at which the Nigerian pirates have gone and successfully hijacked vessels or boarded vessel and kidnapped crews … is a significant change since previous years,” Mody added.
Pirate attacks off Nigeria have increased by one- third in 2014 as ships passing through the Gulf of Guinea have come under threat from gangs seeking to snatch cargoes or hold crews for ransom.
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