With the challenge of dearth of adequate platforms to patrol the nation's vast maritime domain, the Nigerian Navy (NN), has called for more concessions in the purchase of Excess Defence Articles and other maritime security hardware from United States.
The Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Rear Admiral Usman Jibrin, made this call at the opening ceremony of Exercise OBANGAME Express 2014 final planning conference held in Navy Town, Lagos.
The exercise which would attract over 22 countries is billed to take place in April, and is expected to tackle the germane challenges facing the maritime sector especially in the Gulf of Guinea.
The CNS who was represented by the Flag Officer Commanding (FOC), Western Naval Command (WNC), Rear Admiral Samuel Alade, urged the US to expand the current training support to the West African sub-region to cover a wider area of human capacity development.
Jibril said the US government and its allies have been making concerted efforts to enhance the capability of the Gulf of Guinea nations to monitor and protect their territorial waters and exclusive economic zones from all forms of illegalities.
He said, "Many countries in the sub-region have benefitted from the US facilitated maritime domain awareness facilities as well as Excess Defence Article acquisition.
"I make bold to state that we have been able to use the capacity so acquired in improving security within our maritime domain in particular and the wider Gulf of Guinea maritime area."
The CNS said these efforts entail a three-pronged strategy of improving the maritime domain awareness capability of concerned nations, enhancing the maritime interdiction capabilities of maritime forces and inculcating the spirit of interagency and sub-regional co operations amongst maritime forces and concerned countries.
Jibrin urged the exercise planners and delegates to aggregate the lessons from these recent engagements and design a realistic exercise that would help fair assessment of our progress.
The Exercise Director, Captain Nancy Lacore, while addressing journalists said the essence of the exercise is to improve the capacity of the African navies to combat crime in order to allow economic activities at sea to flourish.
She said, "We have been seeing huge success in the exercise. This year's exercise has about 400 per cent increase in the number of participants. We have gone from basic tactics to regional cooperation, which is the way to fight crimes at sea."
Chiemelie Ezeobi
THISDAY Correspondent
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