Piracy: Violence in Nigeria’s Waterways

The scale and intensity of piracy in the global maritime sector is on the rise.107 cases of piracy were reported between January and June 2018, compared to 87 cases in 2017.  Also, the number of hostages taken over the period also increased from 63 in the first half of 2017 to 102 in 2018. There is a radical shift in the geography of maritime crime, with Nigeria among the six named countries with high occurrence. It accounted for 31 of the 46 documented cases in the Gulf of Guinea, with Brass, Bonny and Bayelsa as major flashpoints. Thus, the attack levels in Nigerian territorial waters have increased threefold from the 2014 levels, making the country to become worse than Somalia as a flashpoint for maritime violence. On account of these

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