Shocking! Nigeria’s marine police use ‘fishing boats’ to fight crime

A glimpse of an oncoming speedboat stuffed with men wearing black uniforms and helmets on the waterway linking Lagos communities – Ikorodu and CMS – made for a frightening look at first.

Unlike passenger boats, the men in the oncoming boat were wearing distinctive black vests, and it was only when they approached that they were recognised to be policemen patrolling the waterway.

If not for the ‘POLICE’ inscription on their uniforms and the guns they were carrying, one would probably think at first that the men were fishermen because the boat they were patrolling in was not in any way different from the one used by successful fishermen in the country.

On approach, the boat driver of the one our correspondent was travelling in slowed down, making way for the policemen to check the passengers, and after a few minutes of checking, he zoomed off.

But the police boat looked old and rickety, plus there were no special eye-engaging equipment mounted on it to launch attacks should they come across criminals who use the waterway to perpetrate their activities.

There had been several reports on kidnapping, armed robbery, oil pipeline vandalism and piracy being carried out by the perpetrators of these crimes through the country’s waterways, and most times, they were never caught.

In fact, the International Maritime Bureau said that in the first half of 2015, 250 crew members of ships were taken hostage, 14 assaulted, 10 kidnapped, nine injured and one killed in incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships across the globe, in a report by shipsandports.com.ng.

The IMB’s Piracy Reporting Centre tallied 134 incidents of piracy and armed robbery, an increase on the 116 reports in the first half of 2014, whereby pirates boarded 106 vessels, carrying out 13 hijackings and 15 attempted attacks.

Of this number, three events were reported in the second quarter of the year with a total of 11 piracy incidents accounting for 10 crew kidnappings recorded in Nigeria in the first half of 2015.

“A number of crewmembers were also injured and kidnapped in past attacks. Generally, all waters in/off Nigeria remain risky. Vessels are advised to be vigilant, as many attacks may have gone unreported,” IMB said.

These criminals have been successful in their operations to a large extent because the marine unit of the Nigeria Police, as well as the Nigerian Navy, lacks highly sophisticated boats and other gadgets to fight the hoodlums.

This would explain why in the morning hours of Wednesday, June 24, 2015, an armed robbery gang, reportedly led by a woman, unleashed terror on customers and staff of two different banks in Ikorodu, Lagos, carting away about N100m from the two banks.

After the operation, the suspects were said to have escaped in two speedboats via the Ikorodu waterway; they were arrested by the police few days later, though.

A Lagos-based security analyst, Mr. Femi Adeseun, told our correspondent that if there were well-trained marine police officers with sophisticated speedboats, they could have chased after the hoodlums on the water at that very moment and arrested them.

He said, “Those armed robbers had perhaps researched that we had no police officers who could chase them on the water at that time. That was why they used the route to escape. They did their homework before choosing to escape via water. It is a known fact that generally, the Nigeria Police lack adequate and advanced weapons to fight crimes. And if the ones on land have not got what is needed to perform excellently, how much more the ones on water?

“At times, I wonder if the police we have can truly fight crimes with those old weapons they carry about. If the police on land drive rickety trucks, it is expected that officers in the marine unit will paddle canoes. Until there is a total transformation of all security agencies in Nigeria, this problem will linger on. It’s just an overhaul of the security forces that we need; our problem is not that we don’t have the resources to equip these guys.”

Analysts have said Nigeria does not lack resources to buy advanced equipment for its security forces, including the Nigeria Police, being one of the top 10 countries sitting on massive oceans of oil, with proven crude oil reserves of about 37 billion barrels, a little lesser than those boasted by the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and some others, according to a recent Barclays’ research.

“Nigeria is rich and could buy equipment for the Nigeria Marine Police, but corruption will not let that happen,” Adeseun said.

On October 6, 2015, 44 heavily-armed robbers, reportedly dressed in army camouflage, invaded two banks in the FESTAC area of Lagos, dashing away with millions of naira.

The robbers were said to have operated for about two hours without any disruption and after they were done, they escaped via the 4th Avenue canal, close to the scene of their operation.

But they didn’t escape without wreaking havoc on human lives as they killed three persons, including a woman and her two-year-old baby, while also wounding some of the customers of the banks they invaded.

“The police got there minutes after the robbery which lasted for about two hours. The bandits escaped through the 4th Avenue canal and also from the 23rd Road. This happened right in my backyard,” an eyewitness to the incident, Toni Charles, wrote on Facebook.

“The robbers couldn’t have escaped through the waterway if they didn’t think it was safe for them and if they knew they would be hunted by the marine unit of the police in Lagos,” another eyewitness and FESTAC resident, Thomas Enyi, said.

The observatory tour by Saturday PUNCH correspondent to the CMS and Apapa areas of Lagos, where the marine police usually park their boats showed that navigation panels, among other features, that modern and sophisticated boats possess, were lacking on the police speedboats.

Other than the fact that the people in them were policemen, the boats had no distinguishable features to those our correspondent had seen in states like Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa, where their main mode of transportation is water.

After seeing all these, it was not surprising that on August 12, 2015, about thirty minutes after a Bristow helicopter carrying 12 people from an oil rig in the South-South crashed into the Lagos lagoon in Oworonshoki, some officers belonging to the marine unit of the Nigeria Police arrived at the scene in speedboats looking like those used by the local boat operators who had initiated the search and rescue operation.

Apart from their distinctive blue colour and the ‘POLICE’ inscriptions on the speedboats deployed in the scene, it could be safe to say that marine police in Nigeria lack well-equipped speedboats to fight crimes and embark upon rescue missions on the waterways.

“Are these the boats our marine police use? I wonder who must have pocketed the police patrol boat contract money and bought them fishing canoes instead!” our correspondent overheard a resident in the area asking a colleague at the crash scene.

A hilarious but serious comment, perhaps!

A look at the marine police in Nigeria

The marine police, also known in some countries as water police, harbour patrols, port police, maritime police, nautical patrols, bay constables or river police, are police officers, usually a department of a larger police organisation, who patrol in watercraft.

Experts said their patrol areas may be coastal seawaters, rivers, estuaries, harbours, lakes, canals or a combination of these.

Apart from ensuring the safety of water users, they are also responsible for enforcing laws relating to water traffic, preventing crimes on vessels, banks and shores, providing search and rescue services and allowing the police to reach locations not easily accessible from land.

They are also responsible for coastal security, conservation law enforcement, immigration and smuggling patrols, and diving search operations.

Because of their specialised duties, they are expected to possess equipment ranging from personal watercraft and inflatable boats to large seagoing craft, though most police vessels are small to medium, fast motor launches.

Study indicates that in some places, these vessels incorporate a firefighting capability through a fixed deck nozzle and that operators of these vessels are generally trained in many rescue disciplines including, first aid, vessel dewatering, firefighting, rescue and scuba diving.

In 2013, the Nigeria Police established the Maritime Police Command, a fusion of the Marine Police Command, the Police Ports Authority Command and the Inland Waterways Formation, with the headquarters in Lagos.

The command is charged with the responsibility of maintaining law and order and providing adequate security in the country’s ports and harbours, including tackling contemporary security challenges such as armed robbery, piracy, kidnapping, gun running and other related crimes in the creeks, harbours and territorial waterways – functions similar to those performed by the marine police of other countries in the world.

However, findings by Saturday PUNCH have shown that the marine police have not been adequately equipped with sophisticated weapons to fight the listed crimes.

An officer in the marine unit of the Nigeria Police spoke to our correspondent on the condition of anonymity that there were no such sophisticated equipment available to them to fight crimes.

The source said some of them were usually surprised when Nigerians challenge them on why they run from confronting criminals sometimes.

“When we lack advanced weapons to fight, we cannot confront them. Some of us are never afraid; if we have good equipment and enjoy good welfare, this will boost our morale and we will perform our duties well. I don’t think we have boats that can race speedily, especially if we are to go on rescue operations. The ones we have are very low-powered,” the source said.

Another anonymous source, who works in the marine unit of the Nigeria Police, also told our correspondent that it was true that they lacked sophisticated equipment to fight crimes on waterways.

He said, “One of our problems here is that we’ve not had a serious Federal Government that would carry out a reformation of the police as a whole. We buy our uniforms, we buy helmets, we buy life jackets because these things are not usually provided for us.

“If at all they are going to be provided, we wait for many months, even years sometimes, before we get those things. Now ask me, how could we do more than we’re capable of?

“We want to use sophisticated equipment too, but are we going to contribute money to purchase them? By the way, where is the money? We don’t live in good houses, we borrow money to cater for our families, we are not taken care of. So, how do we engage criminals with low morale?”

An Abuja-based policy analyst, Jide Oluyemi, opined that Nigerians sometimes encourage the ‘recklessness’ and nonchalant attitudes of the leaders of the country, one of the reasons why some institutions like the Nigeria Police are not working well as expected.

He said, “When issues like this are discussed, there is usually an outrage by some people who believe Nigeria should not be compared with other countries of the world. But how can we grow without comparing? They usually say we just got democracy; they enjoy pampering our leaders and giving reasons why things are not yet working. These leaders tell us stories like, ‘Our predecessors left behind a huge debt,’ ‘They have damaged the system before we got here,’ and we eventually take to pitying them.

“For instance, oil pipeline vandals and bunkerers have done immeasurable damage to the economy of this country because we don’t have enough equipment and personnel to resist them. These criminals buy advanced weapons, but we deprive our security forces of such. How will they secure the waterways?”

Nigerian marine police and others: A comparison

A look at the boats used by the marine police in countries like Spain, Croatia, Germany, Finland, Egypt, the United States, South Africa, among others, shows that they have deck nozzles and firefighting capabilities.

These equipment, generally termed police watercraft, are displayed on the websites of the marine police units of some of the mentioned countries.

Police watercraft refers to boats or other vessels that are used by police agencies to patrol bodies of water.

Employed on rivers, police boats also have high-performance engines in order to catch up with fleeing fugitives on the water.

These equipment have been in use by some of the countries mentioned above since the beginning of the 20th century and the types being used include patrol boats, fast pursuit vessels, motorboats, airboats, rigid-hulled inflatable boats and others.

“We don’t have such equipment. I only see them in movies,” another officer of the Nigeria Marine Police told Saturday PUNCH on the condition of anonymity.

A Nigerian counterterrorism expert in the US and publisher of the African Journal of Counterterrorism, Oludare Ogunlana, told our correspondent in an email that it is sad that the Nigeria Marine Police are not well-equipped to do their work.

While describing it as a general problem, he said all sectors had suffered neglect for many years due to corruption and lack of vision by the leaders.

He said, “The former Chief of Defence Staff (Alex Badeh) confessed recently that the last time military hardware was bought was in 2006. The same problem is applicable to our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Their equipment are obsolete, the recruitment was based on nepotism and not on merit. There is lack of training and personnel development; the people at the frontline are poorly remunerated and all these have led to low morale.

“On the other hand, criminals are spending money on sophisticated equipment. They are more prepared and determined than those we trust our security upon. The implication of this on our national security is obvious – we are living in perilous times.”

Ogunlana said he believes that the present government would do enough to equip the marine police with advanced weapons to fight crimes on the waters.

He added, “The current government is still in planning stage, taking inventory of what we have. Planning stage is very essential. President Muhammadu Buhari was a former general and military commander. He understands the importance of strategic planning. It is not only about weapons and technology; we need quality people of integrity and strong character to drive the process. Let us be optimistic that the present administration will do something drastic to reform all our security agencies and equip them to face all forms of threat we face today in Nigeria.

“Also, I completely agree with the President that the Nigeria defence industry should set target to start producing some of the equipment locally. If Pakistan and India are producing military hardware, what stops Nigeria? South Africans are good at producing battle tanks. Libyans, under Ghadaffi, were able to manufacture their equipment locally.

“I remember that former President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed former Military Administrator of Lagos State, Gen. Buba Marwa, as head of the Defence Industry Corporation of Nigeria in 2002 and they started all these projects. I think it is a laudable plan that can help reduce the amount of money we spend on equipment. Nigeria can manufacture rifles, speedboats and operation vehicles and other basic hardware.”

Maritime security essential for economic prosperity

Successful launching of attacks against hoodlums who use the waterways and apprehending them would make way for a prosperous Nigeria and Africa as a whole, a researcher with the African Centre for Strategic Studies, Washington, Dr. Assis Malaquias, said in an article.

He is one out of the many who believe that maritime security is crucial for the continent’s economic development and overall security.

“African trade is becoming more expensive and less economical due to the lack of adequate security presence in Africa’s maritime spaces. Much remains to be done in terms of maritime assets, capabilities, and tactics as well as strengthening legal, legislative and institutional arrangements,” he said.

Effort to fight crimes on waterways

As a result of the recent robbery incidents whereby the perpetrators escaped via the waterways, the Lagos State House of Assembly has focused on how to tighten security on the waterways in the state.

The House also called on the Federal Government to direct the marine police – and the Nigerian Navy – to provide adequate security on the waterways in the state.

A lawmaker, Olumuyiwa Jimoh, representing Apapa Constituency 2, lamented that armed robbers were trying to place Lagos State under siege and that the Ikorodu robbery incident was similar to the one that occurred in Lekki recently.

“The armed robbers operated commando-like, unchallenged, and operated with highly-sophisticated equipment and highly-experienced individuals. We should wake up to strengthen the control and security of our waterways. We should work with the communities along the waterways for intelligence purposes,” he said.

More challenges and the way forward

There is no doubt that the Nigeria Marine Police is having challenges dealing with crimes on the waterways.

However, the Nigeria Police said it had been looking into the challenges faced by its marine unit and looking for ways to make it work effectively.

Despite several calls and text messages to the spokesperson for the Nigeria Police, Bisi Kolawole, to seek for comments on the issues at hand, she has didn’t respond.

But a former spokesperson, Emmanuel Ojukwu, told the News Agency of Nigeria recently that all broken-down boats of the marine unit of the police would be repaired, adding that efforts were on to purchase more advanced boats.

“This is to enable the unit’s officers and men to meet the challenges of crime, especially the ones posed by the recent robbery attacks on the waterways. We are re-strategising the marine police operation to check criminal activities using the inland waterways,” he said.