Chart 1 Chart created by the Author from Table 1)
2.4 Linkages between piracy and other maritime crimes
2.4.4 Piracy and drugs, arms and human trafficking
In the same vein, ports in Nigeria, as well as other countries in the Gulf of Guinea, lack sufficient oversight, effective monitoring and proper surveillance by maritime regulatory and security agencies, which encourage piracy and other maritime crimes in the region. In fact, long coastlines,
214) Ibid.
215) Ibid.
216) Ibid.
217) Jasmine Hughes, “The Piracy-Illegal Fishing Nexus in the Western Indian Ocean,”
Strategic Analysis Paper, 10 February, 2011, p. 3.
218) Stig J. Hansen, “Debunking the Piracy Myth: How Illegal Fishing Really Interacts with Piracy in East Africa,” (2012) RUSI Journal, Vol. 156, No. 6, pp. 26-30.
219) Ghassan Schbley & William Rosenau, “Piracy, Illegal Fishing, and Maritime Insecurity in Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania,” CAN Strategic Studies, November, 2013 p. 19.
220) UNSC Report on Somalia of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, UN Doc.
S/2013/413, July 12, 2013, Annex 3.1, p. 100.
porous borders, weak enforcement mechanisms, corruption, infrastructural decadence, and weak maritime regulatory and security institutions have enabled IUU fishing, as well as trafficking in drugs, arms and human to thrive in Nigeria. This situation is further aggravated by lack of political will by the various countries to effectively secure their maritime zones, thereby allowing smuggling routes to become established in their various ports, with an estimation of 50 tonnes of cocaine worth US$2 billion and destined for Europe, transiting West Africa annually.221
Aside from providing nearly 10 percent oil and 4 percent natural gas, Nigeria and other Gulf of Guinea countries provide an easy source of narcotic supply to the EU.222 Reflecting on the dangers posed by drug trafficking in Europe and the link to the Gulf of Guinea, the Council of the EU states that the “region’s proximity to Europe with easy sea access gives it a comparative advantage over the Middle East for our oil needs and Europe remains a primary export market for other regional products, including forestry, agricultural and mineral resources. Narcotics…trafficked along the coast…are increasingly damaging local communities and fuel problems in Europe.”223 On their own part, South American pirates are linked to drug smuggling and hijacking of yachts.224
Herbert-Burns rightly states that the sustained trafficking of illicit narcotics, weapons, and people through the sea, particularly in the Indian Ocean, will persist for the medium-to long-term.225 The reasons for this conclusion include the fact that there are many sources of high-volume
221) A. Anyimadu, supra note 190, pp. 4-5
222) Council of the EU, “EU Strategy on the Gulf of Guinea,” Foreign Affairs Council Meeting, Brussels, 17 March, 2014, p. 2.
223) Ibid.
224) Lydelle Joubert, “The Extent of Maritime Terrorism and Piracy: A Comparative Analysis,” (2013) South African Journal of Military Studies, Vol. 41, No. 1, p. 117.
225) Rupert Herbert-Burns, “Countering Piracy, Trafficking, and Terrorism: Ensuring Maritime Security in the Indian Ocean,” STIMSON, April, 2012, p. 4.
supply for all the three commodities; there are equally sufficiently huge number of points of exports located in key countries that are exposed to chronic insecurity and corrupt officials; and particularly, the environment within which this occurs is vast and essentially insecure, including lengthy tracts of unpatrolled coastline.226 This dissertation rightly argues that these features also allow piracy to thrive, especially in the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Guinea.
On the issue of weapon trafficking in Nigeria, two incidents readily come to mind. In one of the incidents, 15 Russian sailors of the MV Myre Seadiver were detained by the Nigerian Navy for illegally bringing 14 AK- 47 rifles with 3, 643 rounds of ammunition into Nigeria in October, 2012.227 The other incident involved a British gun-runner, Gary Hyde, who was given a jail term of 7 years for arranging the sale of 80, 000 AK-47 assault rifles and 32 million rounds of ammunition in Nigeria, as well as spearheading the shipment of over 800, 000 pounds shipment of tens of thousands of small arms and light weapons (SALWs) from China to Africa.228 It is therefore argued that arms trafficking facilitates piracy in Nigeria by providing weapons to pirates in the execution of their nefarious acts.
2.4.5 Piracy and other maritime crimes
In furtherance of the above, piracy is also engendered by the proliferation of SALW in the Gulf of Guinea region, especially in Nigeria, which has encouraged and sustained the outbreak of violent conflicts in the country as well as other neighbouring countries. From Bah’s point of view, out of 100 million illicit weapons in circulation in sub-Saharan Africa, about eight to
226) Ibid.
227) S. Momoh, supra note 210.
228) Ibid.
ten million are concentrated in the West African sub-region.229 Onuoha argues that the availability of SALWs contributes to the frequency and intensity of conflicts, criminality, as well as maritime piracy, which has bedeviled the countries in the Gulf of Guinea region.230 It is not surprising that countries, like Nigeria, confronted by these challenges, “tend to couch their security in terms of narrow, landward security. An obvious consequence for this narrow view of security is the overwhelming support given to land-based forces, particularly the army, to the neglect of maritime security forces such as navy, air force and coast guards.”231
Linking SALW to piracy, Chalk opines that the availability of light weapons which originates “from unregulated arms bazaars and former and on-going conflict zones, weapons are widely prevalent, cheap, readily transportable, easy to handle, and durable. These munitions are perfectly suited to designs of Somali gangs, providing them with the necessary
“hardware” to take on, seize, and hold even the largest ocean-going carriers.”232
As a corollary to the above, contemporary piracy has been alluded to terrorism. Murphy, on his part, is of the opinion that terrorists will collude with pirates in order to extend their dominance at the sea.233 In his view, Brooks contends that piracy offers terrorists a means to finance their ongoing land-based operations.234 Thus, it could be argued that contemporary pirates
229) Freedom C. Onuoha, “Piracy and Maritime Security in the Gulf of Guinea: Nigeria as a Microcosm,” Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, 12 June, 2012, p. 8, citing Alhaji Bah.
230) Ibid, pp. 8-9
231) Ibid.
232) Peter Chalk, “Piracy off the Horn of Africa: Scope, Dimension, Causes and Responses,”
(2010) The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. XVI, Iss. II, p. 97.
233) Martin N. Murphy, Small Boats, Weak States, Dirty Money: Piracy and Maritime Terrorism in the Modern World (Columbia UP: New York 2008) p. 380.
234) Peter Brookes, “The Challenges of Modern Piracy” in M.R. Haberfeld & Agostino von Hassel (eds.) Modern Piracy and Terrorism: The Challenges of Piracy for the 21st Century (Kendall Hunt: Dubuque, IA 2009) p. 31.
operating at sea today maintain a relationship with regional terrorist groups.235 On the other hand, doubts have been cast on such ‘spurious arguments’ which cannot be supported with evidence, and writers have equally reiterated the fact that there is no supportable evidence of such a relationship.236 Nelson’s reflection is that the “implications of a terrorism- piracy nexus have a profound impact on international stability, and it is important to determine whether or not this is an existing threat or has the potential of becoming one.”237 It is the position of this research that going by the nature of modern piracy in Nigeria and the Strait of Malacca, there is sufficient platform for pirates and terrorists to interact in furtherance of their individual or collective goals.
Alawode & Ogunleye aptly outline some of the acts of oil terrorism, as well as piracy, in Nigeria which include blowing up of oil pipelines, installations, and platforms with explosives, and the seizure of oil barges, oil wells, flow stations, support vessels, and other oil facilities. According to the authors:
(i) On January 16th, 2005, a major pipeline supplying crude to the Forcados export terminal was blown up, cutting supplies by about 100,000 barrels per day.
(ii) On March 18th, 2005, militants blew up an oil pipeline operated by an Italian company, reducing flow by 75,000 barrels per day.
235) Roger L. Tomberlin, “Terrorism’s Effect on Maritime Shipping,” in M.R. Haberfeld &
Agostino von Hassell (eds.) ibid, p. 53.
236) Joubert is of the opinion that the likelihood of pirates and terrorist working together is limited because their objectives are different. It is not in pirates’ interest to cooperate or collaborate with terrorists. See L. Joubert, supra note 220, p. 131. See also Peter Chalk, “The Maritime Dimension of International Security: Terrorism, Piracy, and Challenges for the United States,” RAND, Project Air Force, 2008, pp. 31-32 and Bateman Sam, “Assessing the Threat of Maritime Terrorism: Issues for the Asia-Pacific Region,” (2006) Security Challenges, Vol. 2, No. 3, p. 81.
237) Eric S. Nelson, “Maritime Terrorism and Piracy: Existing and Potential Threats,” (2012) Global Security Studies, Vol. 3, Iss. 1, p. 23.
(iii) On October 3rd, 2006, militants struck at an oil vessel at Cawthorowe Channels, killing five soldiers who were escorting the vessel, and later sinking the vessel.
(iv) On May 8th, 2007, MEND attacked three oil pipelines; two of these pipelines were in the territory of Akassa and the third in Twon- Brass.238