Go about your duty without fear, Navy assures seafarers

Nigerian Navy has assured seafarers of improved maritime environment.

The Maritime Domain Awareness for Trade–Gulf of Guinea (MDAT-GoG) information centre had reported that the latest incident occurred on Monday, April 10, approximately 300 nautical miles south-southwest of Abidjan, Cote d’ Ivoire.

After the event, the Navy High Command intensified operations through use of Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) to locate a tanker boarded by pirates in GoG, less than three weeks after the hijacking of a tanker named MT Monjasa Reformer on the high sea.

According to naval spokesman, the Nigerian Maritime Domain has been well fortified to forestall further occurrences.

His words: “The spate of piracy in GoG within the last 10 years reduced to an all-time low in 2022. While concerted efforts are being made to reduce piracy within GoG to its lowest minimum, two unfortunate incidences were recorded within GoG in the last three weeks.

The first incident, which involved hijack of Motor Tanker (MT) MONJASA REFORMER, occurred on March 25, 2023 at a location, 144 nautical mile (nm) West-South-West (WSW) of Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo.

“It was later discovered that the pirates abducted six crew members from the vessel. The second incident involved the hijack of MT SUCCESS-9 about 306 nm SW of Abidjan Fairway Buoy (FWB), Cote d’Ivoire on   April 10, 2023.

“In reaction to the recent spike in piracy incidents in GoG, the Nigerian Navy (NN) has sustained presence of her capital ships at sea, as well as directed operations bases to enhance efforts to dominate their Areas of Operations.

It is pertinent to state that the NN vectored Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) GONGOLA to rendezvous MT MONJASA REFORMER in company of NNS KANO and a French Warship to escort the vessel to Lome, Togo.

“The NN has equally continued to employ her surveillance infrastructure to monitor shipping activities within the nation’s maritime environment and will continue to exploit intelligence to track activities of criminals to maintain sanctity of the Nigerian Maritime Environment (NME).

“To this end, the NN enjoins all seafarers to continue to carry out their legitimate businesses without fear,” the force pledged.