LAW ‘Anti-piracy bill will help Nigeria fight sea piracy’
Warren Fensom,trainer with the United Nations office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) spoke on the sidelines of a meeting at the Ministry of Justice in Abuja on the training of prosecutors on piracy prosecutions in federal courts. He wants Nigeria to quickly enact the Anti-Piracy Bill to support the fight against sea piracy and sundry maritime crimes. Experts:
Can you explain the nature of your mission here?
It is to assist the Federal Government with the development and capability to prosecute piracy in the federal courts. I am here on training for prosecutors on piracy. It is a crime that cuts across many international maritime borders. It requires a lot of collaboration to check.
What agencies are involved in this programme?
Actually with respect to the enforcement of the matters of the sea, there are 18 different agencies that I can see from a more recent harmonized SOP (Standards of Procedure) on how maritime matters are enforced involving various things from fisheries, transport, bunkering, safety all these things. My focus is actually on Anti-Piracy Bill at the National Assembly which hopefully will be enacted.
What are the lapses in Nigeria’s admiralty law that needs strengthening?
Like many countries in the world, everybody knows what piracy is but except there is something directly affecting that country, most of these countries have not kept the law of piracy up to date with respect to the International Convention on the Law of the Sea which defines what international piracy is. So what we are doing is making sure the legislation is correct so that anybody who is an alleged pirate can be taken before a court and dealt with appropriately.
Do you think the judges and prosecutors you talked about are ready for the enforcement of this new law?
They are certainly ready to start training. They are looking with enthusiasm on getting the bill to the legislature so that they can actively enforce anti-piracy laws.
Maritime activities are mostly in the southern part of the country, do you look to have special courts in these jurisdictions?
The Federal Government has the authority over admiralty and over prosecutors. I don’t know exactly where the physical courts will sit. But it will be the jurisdiction of federal prosecutors to take the case on.
What advice do you have as the country develops this new body of criminal law?
I am impressed with the synergy and effort being made by the Nigerian Navy, other prosecutors and stakeholders in moving forward to seeing that we can possibly get rid of piracy in Nigeria.
There has been a harmonised SOP that obviously took all the stakeholders together for everybody to understand their roles of how things can be done on the high seas. That is a huge step because it is always difficult when there are so many agencies involved to understand what the authorities of each involve and this SOP definitely assists. And that is something that I just see here.