By Evelyn Usman, Esther Onyegbula, Faith Ake & Angela Okpe

lagos—The Nigerian Navy , NN has reinstated its resolve to combat the myriads of criminality in the nation’s maritime domain, with an operational concept based on what it termed  traditional  tripod  of surveillance, presence and interdiction.

To achieve this, it disclosed that it had acquired 30 ships, with an additional 50 Offshore Patrol Vessels expected by the end of May, 2016.

Director, Naval Information, Commodore Chris Ezekobe said this during a courtesy visit to Vanguard’s  Corporate headquarters in Lagos, yesterday,  that the Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibass had also instituted the use of house boats with organic platforms in the Navy’s pursuit to secure the nation’s maritime domain.

The CNS according to him, directed that the boats be placed on  major junctions of the nation’s  water ways, with a view  to further limit the possibilities of  crude oil thieves and  pipelines vandals to  move their  loots  to mother vessels off shore.

Aside this measure, the CNS,  he said, had also  directed that each of the operational commands;  the Western, Central Eastern naval commands  kept  to sea one capital ship everyday, in order to increase the level of patrols and operational activities as well as naval presence on the nation’s maritime space.

“We have also attempted to improve upon our surveillance systems. We have the Regional Maritime Awareness Capability centre headquarters here in Lagos but with develop satellite stations all along our coast. The satellite station has the capabilities of radar  coverage of 25 to 35 nautical miles.  So,  essentially our territorial waters are well covered by the surveillance system but the problem is the Exclusive Economic Zone,” he said.