Navy hands over 1,646 suspected oil thieves for prosecution

Nigerian Navy recently handed over 1,646 suspected oil thieves to the police, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps for prosecution, the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Dele Ezeoba, has said.

Ezeoba  at the inauguration of the Chief of Naval Staff Strategic Guidance '02' in Abuja said the suspects were arrested between October 12 and September 13, 2013.

He further stated that the  operatives of the Navy also destroyed 1,556 illegal refineries, 1443 wooden boats and 69, 606 auxiliary equipment during the period.

The Navy Chief added that the service rescued two vessels -MV Crow and MT Norte- which were carrying 17,000 metric tonnes of gasoline as of the time they were hijacked by the pirates.

He said the efforts of the Navy had resulted in a drastic reduction of the incidents of piracy and                                                                                                                                                                                                               oil theft in the nation's maritime domain.

He added that the Navy responded effectively to most of the alerts it received on piracy and sea robbery and was investigating others.

Similarly, Ezeoba has blamed the activities of insiders for the incessant attacks on ships in Nigerian waters especially in the Niger Delta region.

While speaking in another event at Brass, Bayelsa State shortly after inaugurating the Maritime Regional Awareness Capability (RMAC) centre, Ezeoba said investigations of similar incidents in the past by the navy revealed that some crew members working for companies’ ships gave out information about the locations of their vessels to pirates.

He assured that the navy was dealing with the situation, saying though no society was devoid of criminality, the Nigerian maritime space was safe despite pockets of criminal activities.

He said, “In every society, you must have incidences of criminality. If in two, three, four, five months, you have one incident of criminality, it tells us that the maritime space is safe.

“We are doing the best we can but that in a way will not take away the facts that at some points, we have gaps. But these gaps are not created out of the blues.

“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 onboard 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.

“If we are able to catch theses people and they are investigated, tried and jailed, we have taken away some bunch of bad guys.”