Trawler owners lose N119bn to piracy in eight years

The Nigerian Trawlers Owners Association, the umbrella body for indigenous industrial fishing companies, has said that its members have lost a whopping N118.5bn in the last eight years.
The association attributed the loss to the increasing menace of pirates and sea robbers in Nigeria’s territorial waters, which has also resulted in the deaths of 6,083 crew members within the same period.
The Malaysian-based International Maritime Bureau, IMB, the global piracy watchdog, had for three consecutive years (2009, 2010 and 2011) rated Nigeria’s waters second most dangerous after Somalia in terms of sea robbery and piracy attacks.
This development, which had many most liners declare Nigeria a high risk area with the attendant hike on insurance premium on Nigeria-bound cargo, had also compelled most American and European countries, including the United States of America and Britain, to issue security alerts to their nationals intending to travel to Nigeria.
National President of the association, Mr. Joseph Overo, who spoke in an exclusive interview with National Mirror in Lagos at the weekend, said the direct financial loss covered the period between 2003 and 2011.
It was also gathered that in addition to the huge financial loss, due to these attacks, the area of operation of the members had been reduced by over 70 per cent as places like the Escravos, Forcados, River Ramos, River Dodo, Pennigton, Brass and several others in the Niger Delta region had been declared no-go areas because of the attacks.
Figures released by the association showed that members lost N5bn in 2003; N6bn in 2004; N7.5bn in 2005 and N12bn in 2006.
Other details showed that in 2007, members lost N13bn, N15bn in 2008 and N17bn in 2009 even as N20bn and N23bn were lost in 2010 and 2011, respectively, bringing the total to N118.5bn.
The president, who also gave a graphic details of how the industry had fared in the last eight years, said in 2004, there were about 44 industrial fishing companies but regretted that this had presently reduced to only four operational firms, “as the others have closed shop because they could no longer cope.”
He added that during the period under review, there were over 250 fishing trawlers but which had reduced to a little above 100.
Overo blamed this directly on the piracy and robbery attacks on trawlers, “a development that has apart from massive loss of jobs, has also led to death of crew, captains, sailors and other equipment.”
Statistics also showed that the association lost 44 crew members in 2003; 121 in 2004; 374 in 2005 and 627 in 2006.
Others include the death of 1,177 crew and other members of staff in 2007; 1,045 in 2008 while 1,265 and 1,430 deaths were recorded in 2010 and 2011 respectively in the uncontrolled piracy attacks on Nigerian waters.
The NITOA-boss noted that the existing members had invested N40bn in offshore and seaborne assets and currently providing direct employment of up to 5,250 and another 300,000 indirect jobs for Nigerians.
“The sector is a key player in Nigeria’s quest for economic diversification and boosting non-oil exports.
The Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, Mr. Patrick Akpobolokemi, had recently admitted that in the past eight years, maritime piracy had been on the increase around Africa despite growing national, regional and international efforts at improving the maritime security along sea routes.
IMB report on piracy and armed robbery showed that there were 1,434 incidents of piracy in Africa between 2003 and 2011. Beginning from 2007, the number of attacks had been on the increase, jumping from 61 in 2006 to 293 in 2011.
The reason for this astronomical rise was the outbreak of piracy off the coast of Somalia and Gulf of Aden, and attacks off the coast of Gulf of Guinea constitute a fair share in Africa; the Gulf of Guinea accounted for 427 of the 1,434 attacks in African waters between 2003 and 2011.