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Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ganiyu Adekeye has dismissed the insinuation that the warships offered Nigeria by British are intended for the Niger Delta.
Adekeye who spoke with newsmen in Ibadan at the end of a three-day prayer retreat organized by the Naval Officers’ Wives Association (NOWA) also restated Federal Government’s resolve to hand over the disputed Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon on August 14.

The naval chief said the British warships expected soon were to aid the Navy in policing the nation’s vast territory, and not particularly meant for deployment to quell the Niger Delta crisis.
“On the ships that are coming from the United Kingdom, we are expecting them. However, the ships are not coming because of the Niger Delta.

The Navy is a national institution created by the constitution to safeguard the maritime interest of Nigeria and the country’s territorial waters extend by about 200 nautical miles offshore. If you translate the area contained therein to kilometers, it turns to about 286,000 square kilometers of water. It is almost one-third of the total land surface of Nigeria. The sea starts from Badagry and continues like that. Niger Delta is not the only area the ships would face. If they are coming, they are coming to serve everywhere.

“The solution to the Niger Delta region is a national approach to the problem. There are political approach, socio-economic approach, and the military approach. The military approach is the last resort. The government has the capacity to manage the political situation and it is making efforts to address it. The social economic approach had started for some time. The government created the Niger Delta Development Commission for the rapid development of the area. The government is calling on the leaders of the region to even review certain aspects of the Bill. It is when all these fail that the military approach would be resorted to.

“It is the government’s decision, not that of the navy or army, or airforce or the police. All these are instruments of government to ensure security. The nation reserves its right to exercise its right on any part of the federating unit of the nation. Niger Delta is just one of the areas. There are problems in other parts of the nation at the moment where there are certain challenges. We have the tanker drivers blocking the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. That is a security threat on its own. To use a military force to solve that problem is always the right and the discretion of the Federal Government.

But the armed forces, we are standing by. We hope we will not get to the point that we will need to apply the military option. However, if we get to the river, we will cross it,” Adekeye explained.
Responding to a question the security implication of the handing over of the Bakassi peninsula, Adekeye explained that government’s determination to ensure that the ICJ ruling was implemented was a welcome development, because any disobedience of the ruling would be inimical to the entire citizenry and not Bakassi people alone.

“Well, is it not better for us to have a friendly neighbour than to have a hostile one? That is a simple way of looking at it. But more importantly is the fact that if we don’t hand over, we would have incurred the wrath of the whole United Nations. Some of you, who are old enough, would know that for about five years we were under heavy sanctions. We are just getting out it.

“So, if they put another sanctions on us, even the oil we are selling will not go. It is as bad as that. And cocoa, coffee, rubber will not go and we will not even get equipment to service our machineries here. It happened to us before and I don’t think we want to go to that era again, especially, I don’t think we have any strong reason to reject the ruling. We voluntarily went to the International Court of Justice and a decision was taken on it. The judicial action has been taken, but we should not be seen to be disobeying the international law especially by a government that believes so much in the rule of law and due process,” he stated.

Speaking on the rationale behind the prayer retreat, which took place at the Premier Hotel, Ibadan, NOWA National President, Hajia Fatima Adekeye, explained that the gesture was to seek God’s intervention in the series of calamities affecting the nation, seek divine protection and guidance for those in positions of authorities and most especially the need for peace in the Niger Delta region.