By Oluyinka Onigbinde
A former Special Adviser to former President Goodluck Jonathan on Maritime Affairs, Leke Oyewole, has blamed the failure of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) to effectively track speedboats, skiffs and other small crafts navigating the nation’s waterways, for the continued vulnerability of vessels to sea robbery and other maritime crimes.
Oyewole said, while government agencies had developed capabilities to monitor large commercial vessels, little attention had been paid to the smaller boats frequently used by criminals to approach and attack vessels on Nigerian waters.
He argued that the situation could be addressed if NIWA, which has regulatory jurisdiction over inland waterways and crafts, introduced a comprehensive system for numbering, registering and electronically-tracking every speedboat, skiff, flyboat, barge and pleasure craft operating on the inland waterways.
According to him, the same system used to identify vehicles on Nigerian roads should be applied to boats operating on the waterways, with tracking devices installed to enable authorities to establish the identity, ownership and location of every craft.
“If I were the MD of the inland waterways today, what I would do is to make sure that the same way cars are numbered on the roads, the skiffs, the flyboats must be numbered and you put trackers on them,” Oyewole said.
He stressed that the absence of such a system was particularly problematic because sea robbers often operate with small, fast-moving boats that do not use the Automatic Identification System (AIS) required or used for monitoring larger vessels.
Oyewole noted that while agencies such as the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) have the capability to identify vessels that switch off their AIS or transponders, the same surveillance gap exists around the smaller crafts used by criminals.
He therefore maintained that tracking the smaller crafts would provide security agencies with a critical advantage, particularly when investigating attacks on vessels.
According to him, once every boat operating within the inland waterways is registered, numbered and fitted with a tracker, authorities would be able to identify which crafts were operating around the location of a reported attack and narrow down the possible suspects.
“Wherever every flyboat is in the country, you can identify, know the owners, you collect money correctly for monitoring them and all that. You make money from it,” he said.
Oyewole, who disclosed that he currently heads the commercial arm of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), said Nigeria already possessed technologies capable of supporting such a surveillance system.
He said satellite technology, including synthetic aperture radar and optical satellite imagery, could be deployed to monitor maritime activities during both day and night.
“These are technologies that are available. They are off-the-shelf technologies,” he said, arguing that government agencies should be more innovative in deploying available technology to solve persistent security challenges.
He also pointed out that technology could be used to monitor vessels that deliberately switch-off their transponders, saying authorities could determine when a vessel went off the tracking system and how long it remained invisible.
“As of today, in my own section there in the Space Agency, I can tell for the last maybe 10 years, every time a vessel has switched off its transponder and for how many hours,” he said.
Oyewole, however, stressed that the solution to Nigeria’s maritime security challenges was not solely about technology, but also about effective collaboration among government agencies.
He explained that NIWA’s responsibility covers inland crafts operating within inland waters, including barges, boats, speedboats, flyboats and pleasure crafts, while NIMASA takes over when vessels move beyond inland waters.
“There must be inter-agency collaboration,” he said, insisting that agencies must be able to share information seamlessly rather than operate within isolated systems.
Efforts to obtain NIWA’s reaction to the concerns raised by Oyewole proved abortive, as calls and text messages sent to the agency seeking its response were not answered.
When contacted, the Lagos Area Manager of NIWA, Engr Sarat Braimah, said she was outside the country and would not be able to respond until she returned.
Oyewole also identified the lack of automation and poor inter-agency collaboration as two major challenges affecting Nigeria’s ability to effectively tackle its security and governance problems.
“Nigeria has only two problems. Use of technology, which is in terms of automation of procedures and processes. And the second problem is interagency collaboration,” he said.
He argued that with properly integrated systems, security agencies would not have to depend on telephone calls, letters or physical requests to obtain information from other government agencies before taking action.
Using the maritime sector as an example, he said the Nigerian Navy should be able to determine electronically whether a vessel had completed its required clearance processes with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and NIMASA before leaving the country.
“If the Navy wants to know which vessel has not cleared from NPA and NIMASA and is leaving the country, they don’t need to ask NPA and NIMASA because they will see it straight away and they go to apprehend it,” he said.
He further called for every arrest made in connection with maritime crime to be followed by a deeper investigation into the network and incentives behind the crime, rather than treating individual arrests as the end of the investigation.
According to him, security agencies must ensure that every arrest leads to the dismantling of the criminal network behind the operation.
“Even when they are able to arrest anybody, they need to dig deeper on the incentives behind it and even the network to make sure they close that one,” he said.
He maintained that Nigeria could significantly improve security on its waterways if government agencies combined technology with effective information sharing.
He said the country already had the technological capacity to monitor maritime movements but needed government agencies and their chief executives to develop the political will and innovative systems required to deploy those capabilities effectively.
He added that properly tracking inland crafts could also create a sustainable revenue stream for NIWA while improving security across the nation’s waterways.
