GMA, Ghana Navy confer with counterparts in Nigeria in fight against piracy
The leadership of the Ghana Navy and the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA) is scheduled to meet with their counterparts in Nigeria this week to discuss the joint deployment of naval and air assets on the Gulf of Guinea.
Ghana’s Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Vice Admiral Seth Amoama, said this when the Director-General of GMA, Mr Thomas K. Alonsi, one of his deputies, Mr Yaw Akosa Antwi, the Director, Technical, Captain Inusah Abdul Nasir, and Acting Director, Maritime Services, Nana Boakye-Boampong, paid a courtesy call on him at his office at Burma Camp in the capital, Accra.
Mr Alonsi said the purpose of the visit was to explore an effective and collective response to the piracy question which is threatening the otherwise good reputation of the country as far as maritime security is concerned.
He prayed the CDS to consider a wide range of responses similar to that deployed in the fight against illegal mining.
The DG said having sat on the GMA Board in the last four years, Vice-Admiral Amoama must have been aware of the steps that have been taken by the GMA to improve security in Ghana’s maritime domain.
A Vessel Traffic Monitoring and Information System (VTMIS) operated by the Authority has been enhanced to improve surveillance, he said.
According to him, the GMA is also in the process of acquiring a vessel that can be stationed at sea for a long time for purposes of maintaining a security presence there.
He said joint patrols by the Authority, the Navy, and Marine Police at Takoradi and Tema anchorages had yielded some results but more needed to be done on the high seas.
Vice-Admiral Amoama, who is the immediate past Chief of Naval Staff said there was a meeting of minds as the Ghana Armed Forces were deeply troubled by the recent spate of attacks on vessels on the Gulf of Guinea.
He said even reports of pilfering from ships at the country’s anchorages were not acceptable to the Navy and steps were taken to deal with them.
He said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has equally been concerned about the attacks and has taken up the issue with his Nigerian counterpart, Muhammadu Buhari, as the perpetrators are believed to come from that country’s troubled Niger Delta region.
The CDS revealed that his successor Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Issah Yakubu had been tasked to liaise with the Nigerians to find a joint solution to the problem of piracy.
Rear Admiral Yakubu said a Maritime Defence Cooperation and an ECOWAS Naval Task Force are being mooted to ensure that rules surrounding jurisdictional boundaries will be relaxed to permit countries to conduct operations in other maritime domains.
“We need a code that would guide operations in each other’s jurisdictions and we should be able to patrol, for instance, the Nigerian waters and pursue criminals into those waters without violating any laws,” he said.
He regretted that currently, countries within the Gulf of Guinea are largely unresponsive when information relating to piracy activities is shared with them. “This must change under a Maritime Defence Cooperation,” Rear Admiral Yakubu asserted.
