*Blacklists foreign vessels in Nigeria
Vincent Toritseju
Lagos — The Nigerian Navy has signed a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, with about thirty private maritime security companies in the country so as to enhance the security of the nation’s maritime space.
Disclosing this at the just concluded Annual General Meeting of the Maritime Security Providers Association of Nigeria, MASPAN, the association’s president, Capt George Alily (Rtd), said that the MoU is not for all members, but only for companies that can provide the logistics purposes that went into such collaboration with the Navy.
Alily said that the security companies will provide the vessels for logistics while the Navy will man such vessels with a view to providing security.
He stated: “There are companies that provide security equipment like surveillance cameras and other security equipment for offshore operation.
“Security operations on the sea are a wide gamut of activities that involves different operators providing different and specific services”.
On the issue of blacklisted foreign vessels, Alily said that he was not privy to the list adding that these vessels must have infringed on the law of the land.
Commenting on the development, Commodore Suleman Dahun, Director of Information, Nigerian Navy, said that he was not aware of any list of blacklisted vessels adding that the Navy only has a list of vessels of interest whose activities were being monitored by the Navy.
He stated: “The Navy does not have any list of blacklisted vessels, what we have is a list of vessels of interest whose activities we are monitoring.
