The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), representing Nigeria and the Inter-Regional Coordination Centre (ICC) Yaoundé, Cameroon, have made fresh moves to stem the rising attacks and kidnapping of seafarers on merchant vessels in the Gulf of Guinea region.
The partners in a communiqué Sunday described the situation as alarming and needed urgent attention.
It said building on announcements made at the G7++FOGG in December 2020, the Executive Director of ICC, Admiral Narciso Fastudo, Jr and the Director General of NIMASA, Dr Bashir Jamoh, have held meetings to explore how to adopt a truly integrated approach to the operational challenge of tackling the problem of piracy and armed robbery.
This will be done through the delivery of NIMASA’s Deep Blue Project with synergy from ICC.
In the spirit of mutual cooperation and building on international best practice, the ICC and Nigeria intend to form a framework to provide shared awareness and de-confliction of activities in the Gulf of Guinea (GOG), with the Gulf Of Guinea Maritime Collaboration Forum (GOG-MCF/SHADE). The forum will be open to all GOG countries with similar capacities to join on a voluntary basis, the communiqué said.
The parties said they plan to hold the first GOG-MCF/SHADE online-meeting shortly, with support from G7++FOGG as they lauded maritime stakeholders and urged them to be involved in the ground breaking effort to reduce regional maritime insecurity.
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