Red faces as navy ship is reported hijacked

Dec 9, 2003
Author: P&S

One can imagine the red faces at navy headquarters in Nigeria this week, after one of the two navy patrol boats sent to safeguard commercial shipping and oil interests in the Niger delta area was highjacked by the very people they were guarding against.

A Nigerian newspaper reports that the commanding officer of the Nigerian Navy in the Niger Delta region has issued orders to rescue the navy personnel who were abducted, along with their vessel, by armed youths in Bomadi in the Delta State.

The report says the youth who carried out the daring attack were armed with ‘superior weapons’ which allowed them to gain control of the fully armed vessel and its personnel.

The patrol vessels had been sent to the area about a week ago after a number of attacks and lawlessness in the Delta region.

Six foreign oil workers were also abducted in Escravos several weeks earlier and although the army has gone looking for them and claims to have arrested four of the abductors, the foreign workers remain listed as missing.