By EVELYN USMAN
APAPA—THE Federal Government has procured four gun boats for the Nigerian Navy, with a charge to the service to live up to its constitutional responsibility of protecting the nation’s territorial waters.

Commissioning the boats, Monday, at the Western Naval Command, Apapa, Lagos, Minister of State for Defence, Erelu Olusola Obada, said  the current  administration was working to repositioning the navy to meet the challenges of the moment, particularly to  curb the menace of pirates on the Nigeria/Benin Republic waterways.

She added that plans had been concluded to invite expert to carry out repairs on some of the country’s war ships and also to procure more, with a view to projecting the nation’s territorial waters.

He added that the challenges faced by the Nigerian Navy as a service and the nation in general were not restricted to the Gulf of Guinea only but also along the Nigeria/Benin water ways.

“Nigeria and Benin have glaring cases of criminality on the waterways. Therefore, we can not afford to let our platforms to be lying low. I assure you that with the transformation agenda of Mr President, we will ensure that there was no encroachment on our waters and also safeguard the lives of our fishes and territorial waters.”

The Minister, who also took a tour on the Service platforms, commended effort of the naval personnel in the on-going construction of a war ship for the first time in the history of the service. She stressed the need for the service to stop depending on foreign supply of spare parts for the warships and boats, advising them to look inward on  producing some of the spare parts needed, as this would go a long way to reduce cost.

Briefing the minister earlier on the state of some of the warships, the Commanding Officer, NNS Aradu, Commodore Steven Kor, listed some of the challenges militating against maintaining the water tight integrity of the ship and solicited for increased funding of the warships with a view to meeting the maritime challenges and enable the ships  carry out their roles.