Nigerian maritime security overview for 2009

Piracy in Nigeria stays the course, despite amnesty

 

Risk Intelligence has recorded 91 piracy-related maritime security incidents in Nigeria’s coastal waters and on the country’s waterways for 2009. This figure is down from 114 in 2008. In spite of this quantitative decline the situation remains as dangerous as it was before, especially as levels of violence against crews have increased. This trend is set to continue. The reason behind the decline of piracy incidents is that the insurgency and counter-insurgency operations in the Niger Delta and the ‘armed truce’ that followed interrupted most pirate activity in the Delta between May and December 2009.

 

Pirate attacks in Nigerian waters in 2009 affected offshore and commercial shipping to nearly equal shares – 42% and 38% of the total, respectively. Inshore passenger vessels, local passenger ferries and fishing craft made up the remaining 20%. Tankers bore the brunt of attacks – 23 of the 91 ships attacked, were crude or product tankers.* These piracy incident figures include specifically hijackings, kidnap-for-ransom at sea and incidents of armed robbery as well as failed attacks recorded by Risk Intelligence’s maritime security monitoring solution MaRisk.

 

Dirk Steffen, Director at Risk Intelligence, sums up the outlook for 2010: “the prospects for developments in Nigeria for 2010 are, once again, grim. The presidential amnesty programme for Niger Delta militants has merely brought a temporary reprieve. With president Yar’ Adua’s fate uncertain, the Federal Government is in limbo and playing for time. Predictably, the demobilization, disarmament and rehabilitation programme has bogged down. Ijaw youth and ‘reformed’ Niger Delta militant leaders are already grumbling about the lack of economic prospects for themselves and their communities. Some militants have taken up the business of piracy as far afield as Lagos to improve their financial situation.”

 

“The proliferation of Niger Delta militant skills to ‘common’ piracy in Lagos, with the resulting increase in violence against crews, and the resumption of militant disruption attacks against the oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta will be the main issues to look out for in 2010,” concludes Dirk Steffen. * Figures differs from the figures of the IMB due to differences in reporting- and registration criteria, where the IMB accepts only reporting from owners or flag states while Risk Intelligence also relies on local or sector sources.