REVEALED! Nigerian Navy has only one ship, so incapacitated, sinks low

 

BY OUR EDITOR

Senate President Ahmad Lawan has revealed that the Nigerian Navy has only one functional vessel to watch over the nation’s vast waterways.

Nigeria, according to information sourced from the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) is blessed with a large resource base of waterways spanning 10,000 kilometers; about 3,800 kilometers is navigable seasonally.

Lawan, speaking in plenary Wednesday decried the “low level the Nigerian Navy has slid into with only one functional vessel for surveillance on maritime security, amid piracy and other challenges.”

He is disturbed that the force had been “so incapacitated that it now has to rely on the platform provided by a private firm to do its work.”

The Senate president’s chilling revelation and reaction came while speaking on the report of the Joint Committee on Navy, Marine Transport and Finance that investigated the alleged “illegal security activities by Ocean Marine Solutions Limited (OMSL) at the Secure Anchorage Area (SAA) of Lagos ports.

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The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) had announced the termination of the controversial security contract which OMSL had with the Navy, claiming that it was illegal and done to allegedly extort vessel owners.

But the apparently irritated nation’s number three citizen, according to THE GUARDIAN report, stated: “This is not the issue for the Senate committee on navy to deal with, it is the issue of the Federal Government because if our navy is this incapacitated, it is a big issue for us and it is unfortunate we are even discussing it in plenary that they have only one functional ship.

“As a giant of Africa, we should be talking of hundreds of ships. This is a challenge for all of us, the National Assembly in particular.”

Chairman of the committee, Senator George Thompson Sekibo, had recalled that the heightening insecurity on Nigerian waters in 2012, particularly at the Lagos ports, led to the establishment of the SAA.