Piracy and other forms of maritime criminality are phenomena that have been with humanity for centuries and are therefore issues countries have had to live with over time. In Nigeria and, indeed, the Gulf of Guinea, piracy, hijacking of ships, kidnapping of seafarers, oil theft and pipeline vandalism, drug trafficking, illegal fishing, etc. have in the last two decades constituted a w...

The Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) was established in 2008 as a strategic national policy initiative on human capital development for the maritime sector of the nations economy. The programme, which is under the management of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), was borne out of the need to harness the country’s opportunity of being a coastal ...

The Atlantic Ocean is that vast body of water that extends to five continents – North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Antarctica – and is the second largest after the Pacific Ocean. The security and safety of the water for the sustenance of international trade and other benefits that are derivable from the sea should be of primary concern not just to countries that border the Atla...

There are strong indications that the security situation in Nigeria’s waterways up to the Gulf of Guinea is improving. The Q3 2021 report of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) is loud and clear on this. This is cheering news for stakeholders in the Nigerian maritime industry in particular and the country in general. The report says the Gulf of Guinea recorded 28 incidents of pira...

“Maritime Domain Awareness is where it all begins. We cannot conduct the operation that we must if we don’t have a good sense of what’s out there, moving on, above or under the sea.” – Admiral Gary Roughead, U.S Navy. Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) represents the range of knowledge of a very wide and all-encompassing subject matter crucial to the maritime security of any nation. It i...

The effort by the current administration at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to drive the paradigm shift from crude oil to the Blue Economy is informed by the need to seek alternative sources of revenue for the country to what has been the traditional source for decades. This is in line with the move by the federal government to diversify the nation’s ec...

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is currently working to shift attention from crude oil as the main source of revenue for the country to what is known as the Blue Economy. This follows the relative success of the Integrated National Security and Waterways Protection Infrastructure, otherwise known as the Deep Blue Project, which has brought about a drastic ...

For quite some time now, efforts have been geared towards diversifying the nation’s economy to reduce, if not eliminate, total dependence on oil as source of revenue and foreign exchange for the country. In fact, there appears to be a national consensus that if such efforts being made today to diversify the national economy had started long before now, the exercise would have begun to be...

The current administration at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) came into office with a three-point agenda, or ‘Triple S’ programme of maritime security, maritime safety and shipping development. Total security has not yet been achieved, but to a large extent, there has been a noticeable reduction in the rate of piracy and other forms of criminality in the N...

The Gulf of Guinea (GOG) where Nigeria is the dominant player accounting for more than 70 per cent of trade has for many years remained, in the eyes of the international maritime community, the most dangerous shipping area in the world, accounting for most of the maritime kidnappings globally. The negative consequences of this for Nigeria, its economy and its people are legion. The ec...