Posted by BY PHILIP NWOSU on
Determined to reposition the Nigerian Navy and ensure it is alive to its combat and policing duties, the Federal Government has acquired 15 boats to enable the force develop and consolidate its capability to check terrorism and illegal bunkering within the country's waterways.
Determined to reposition the Nigerian Navy and ensure it is alive to its combat and policing duties, the Federal Government has acquired 15 boats to enable the force develop and consolidate its capability to check terrorism and illegal bunkering within the country's waterways.
Already, four of these boats which were built in the United States have arrived the country's shores and training of naval personnel to operate them has commenced.
Making this revelation in Lagos, the Flag Officer Commanding (FOC) Western Naval Command, Rear Admiral Simbiliyu Timson said the boats had the capability of enduring deployments to trouble spots within the waterways.
Admiral Timson told Daily Sun that the boats would complement the already developed performance in adverse weather condition remains an advantage to the force.
He said that with this acquisition, the Nigerian Navy, particularly the Western Naval Command, is now poised to give illegal oil bunkerers sleepless night.
Indeed, Daily Sun gathered that in the next few months, a Special Boat Section (SBS) would be constituted in the Navy to ensure that thieves, majoring in the stealing of crude oil and terrorists in the country's territorial waters, no longer succeed in the plot.
The special boat section which would be fashioned in the style of the United States Navy Seal and the British SBS would be grouped in squadron and positioned in such a way that any information received on hijack of flow station and stealing of crude oil and other terrorist activities would be adequately countered.
The boat section would be complemented with the Naval helicopters squadron which would continually conduct a surveillance operation with the country's territorial waters covering over 420 nautical miles.
'The helicopters and the patrol boats would form integrated maritime and air surveillance operations and would have the capacity to tackle assignments as they come," the FOC said.
With 20 pilots trained in the best aviation schools in the world, Admiral Timson said the patrol would be conducted in such a way that when an incident was spotted with the country's territorial waters, the helicopters would pass a signal to the patrol craft which would be vectored to the area where such incidence was taking place.
He said: 'Indeed, the way it is today in the Navy, illegal bunkerers are no longer in a position to match us. It can no longer be in business as usual, because it is only a fool that cannot learn from the mistake of the past."
The FOC said the acquisition was a Federal Government effort to assist the Nigerian Navy and to provide for the force the capability to stem nefarious activities within the waterways.
He said: 'With the arrival of these boats hostage taking at Nigeria's oil facilities in the Niger Delta would be addressed; terrorism and illegal bunkering would also be addressed."
Admiral Timson said efforts were also on to ensure that the remaining 11 boats arrive the shores of the country.
Earlier, the FOC had received the Defence Adviser of Indonesia to Nigeria, Colonel Djayeng Tito whom he explained the operational workings of the Nigerian Navy, particularly the Western Naval Command.
He said the Nigerian Navy was challenged by pirates who carry out their nefarious acts within Nigeria's Exclusive Economic Zone.
The FOC said Nigeria and Indonesia needed to share experiences in the fight against pirates and economic saboteurs.