Challenges In Tackling Insecurity At The Gulf Of Guinea

With over 90 percent of global trade passing through it, the Gulf of Guinea has now become the new global route for the oil trade.

Seafarers and general maritime activities are now witnessing a very tough time in the Gulf of Guinea and the West African coastline as over the years; it has increasingly become a haven for criminality.

The Gulf of Guinea countries includes Nigeria, Cameroon, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe, Ghana, Togo, Cote D'Ivoire, and Benin Republic.


Meanwhile, West African nations on the coastline that have been witnessing turbulent times in sea traffic include Togo, Ghana and Cote D'Ivoire.

Statistics have shown that the Gulf of Guinea is home to precious hydrocarbons, rich fauna and flora, and it is projected that the region would double the production of its estimated 14billion barrels of oil reserve from 4million barrels per day to 8million in the next decade.

These countries' territoral waters have come under sudden transnational crime attacks such as hostage taking and kidnapping, oil bunkering, robbery at sea, human and hard drugs trafficking, all perpetrated by sea pirates.

Facts have revealed that between 2003 and 2008, there had been 293 incidents in the Gulf of Guinea and the West African coastline.
In 2010, there were 45 cases, 2011 it rose to 65 while 37 vessels were attacked in 2012 when pirates carted away goods, money and other valuables.

The consequences of all this is that the region loses over $3billion revenue to illegal bunkering annually with Nigeria being the worst hit.

While Nigeria is said to lose over 100,000 barrels of oil daily, Benin Republic on its part loses a colossal sums in revenue as ship owners now wary of its seaport due to pirates’ activities.

Apart from smuggling and small arms dealing, the coastline is notorious for human and hard drugs trafficking. And if the pirate activities are left unchecked, they could surpass those of the Gulf of Eden, which has been made the most dangerous waterway due to activities of Somali pirates.

According to statistics, between January and September, 2012, there were 42 attacks, 168 hostages kidnapped, and four deaths.

What had been primarily a problem in Nigeria’s Niger Delta has expanded, with attacks or raids in neighbouring Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea since 2009.

Incidents of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea have become more and more frequent over the last years. Data raised by the UN Office on Drugs and Organised Crime also shows a trend away from robbery cases to kidnappings and hijackings.

Indeed, security threats in the maritime arena are of a multidimensional nature. In addition to piracy, they include boundary disputes, disagreements over fishing rights, problems relating to pollution, migration and illegal trafficking of resources, persons, weapons and drugs. Hence, virtually every sphere of national and regional security has a maritime dimension. A cross-cutting issue may well be the socio-economic situation of coastal communities.

As long as the coastline countries are affected, it will certainly impact negatively on landlocked countries that depend on them for export and import activities. The spillover effect is that imports might become difficult to come thereby stalling economic growth.

Fortunately, these concerns have indeed got the attention of the UN which feels that the region must be assisted as the activities of pirates are taking their toll on the countries.

Sierra Leone has not been spared either as revenue loss through illegal fishing is enough to fund ¾ of its annual budget.

In addition to these efforts, the affected countries also need to have a unified legal framework that will effectively handle all cases of piracy to ensure common prosecution of cases as against individual nations taking unilateral action.

ECOWAS, the regional body is also toeing the line of the UN in terms of curtailing the activities of criminals and criminality.

At the recently concluded Gulf of Guinea Conference, Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan did admit that to curb the piracy scourge, stakeholders must collaborate.

According to him, "The only way we can contain it is for the countries within the Central African Region and West African Region to come together.

"Already Nigeria and Benin have been partnering but we need to expand across the coast, the West African Coast and the Central African Coast. So this is the beginning of the end of these excesses of piracy.”

This is not the first time such statements have been made but the question is do the countries in the stretch have the capacity to effectively tackle this challenge?

It is gratifying that the affected nations have started taking serious and committed actions to curtail the excesses of sea bandits. Nigeria and Benin Republic have started joint sea patrols to arrest the situation. Their common stand is: attack on one, is attack on all.

In its individual effort, the Nigerian government has established a new Naval Base in Yenagoa, the capital city of Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta region. This is in addition to the Western Command in Calabar and the Western command in Lagos.

And just recently, Nigeria bought ten patrol boats to boost the activities of its Navy. This facilitated the prompt rescue of the 23-man crew aboard the MT ABU DHABI vessel hijacked by pirates on Nigerian waters recently.

The Joint Task Force in the Niger Delta region has also continued to keep the activities of oil thieves in the region in check.

In order to restore peace and tranquility and make seafaring business safe in the region’s territorial waters, individual countries need to follow the example of Nigeria in terms of maritime security.

West and Central Africa up to the Angolan axis must not only cooperate and pool resources but also garner the political will to end the activities of sea pirates in the regions thereby expanding their economies and improving the collective wellbeing of their people.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the Maritime states of the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) are faced with numerous security challenges in their maritime domain due to the inability of Gulf of Guinea maritime states to coordinate and share relevant information considered necessary to fight these menace.

In order to address these challenges, the Nigerian Navy in collaboration with the United States of America Office of Security Cooperation (OSC) is organizing a regional conference from 28 – 31 July 2013 at the Tinapa Lake side Hotel, Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria for the Gulf of Guinea countries that operate the Automatic Identification System (AIS).

The aim of the conference is to examine the modalities for improving information sharing and enhancing the skill of the AIS operations with a view to improving the general maritime situation among the cooperating states.

The Chiefs of the Naval Staff and delegates from Ghana, Benin, Senegal, Togo, Gabon, Cameroun, and Sao Tome and Principe as well as the Commanders, United States Africa Command and the US Naval Forces have been invited to the conference to assist the Gulf of Guinea in the tackling security challenges in the region.

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