The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has said the Nigerian waterways is no longer dangerous for seafarers, saying there has not been any piracy attack in more than a year.
The director-general of the NIMASA, Dr Bashir Jamoh, said this while defending his agency’s 2023 budget estimates before the Senate Committee on Marine Transport, chaired by Senator Danjuma Goje (APC, Gombe).
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The International Maritime Bureau had declared the Gulf of Guinea, off the coasts of Nigeria, Guinea, Togo, Benin and Cameroon, as the most dangerous sea in the world for piracy.
Jamoh corroborated this when he told the Senate panel that attacks on vessels on the Nigerian waterways worsened sometimes in 2019 with daily incidents of sea robbery.
He said the situation led to the establishment of the Deep Blue Sea project to tackle the menace.
He, however, said the implementation of the project had greatly enabled the agency to tackle the wave of piracy on Nigerian waterways.
He said, “The Deep Blue Sea Project was initiated between 2016 and 2017 when the international community declared Nigerian waters as the most dangerous to trade. I am happy to announce to this committee that we have not had a single attack since the third quarter of 2021 till date,” he said.
The chairman of the Senate committee commended the NIMASA for achieving the milestone.
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