The Nigerian Navy and the Federal Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture (FDFA) have arrested three fishing trawlers with 33 crew members, comprising three Chinese, two Ghanaians and 28 Nigerians, over suspected illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities.
The Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Vice Admiral Idi Abbas, disclosed this on Friday, during the closing ceremony of a two-day joint fisheries protection operation, codenamed Operation Abo Eja, held aboard the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) KADA in Lagos.
Represented by the Flag Officer Commanding, Western Naval Command (WNC), Rear Admiral Abubakar Mustapha, the CNS said the operation, conducted in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, aimed to strengthen surveillance, enforcement, and interagency collaboration against IUU fishing within Nigeria’s maritime domain.
He said the exercise, part of a wider Regional Simultaneous Fisheries Patrol also conducted in Ghana under the coordination of the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea (FCWC) and its Regional Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Centre, was intelligence-led, with the Navy deploying ships, helicopters, drones, Special Boat Service (SBS) elements and its maritime domain awareness assets, alongside the WNC Mission Control Centre.
Abbas said the FDFA complemented this with regulatory expertise, boarding and inspecting vessels around the Lekki offshore area.
Mustapha said Nigeria imports over 70 per cent of its fishery needs, against a local production shortfall, a gap he attributed partly to poaching. He said the partnership between the Navy and FDFA would continue, with naval personnel occasionally drawing on the department’s regulatory expertise while officers are trained to identify infractions during patrols.
He said enforcement powers had been strengthened by the Suppression of Piracy and Other Maritime Related Offences (SPOMO) Act, under which the Navy had previously prosecuted offenders, including oil thieves.
On concerns that poachers exploit overlapping maritime boundaries among Gulf of Guinea states, including Ghana, Togo, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea and São Tomé and Príncipe, Mustapha said Nigeria was strengthening regional cooperation, noting that fish stocks are migratory and losses in neighbouring waters ultimately affect Nigeria.
Garba, however, disputed widely circulated claims that foreign vessels routinely poach in Nigerian waters and that offenders are sometimes caught and released, describing such reports as unsubstantiated and confined to the media. He said the Navy maintains round-the-clock presence in Nigerian waters and would have reported such incidents to his department if they occurred. He also dismissed claims that frozen fish sold in local markets originates from stolen Nigerian stock, saying the fish types involved are not native to Nigerian waters.
Giving details of the arrest, the Director, Monitoring Control and Surveillance, FDFA, Usman Garba, said the patrol team found a vessel operating with a 36mm mesh size, contrary to the prescribed standard for its category, alongside discrepancies in its Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. Two other vessels were found fishing within five nautical miles of the shoreline with their AIS switched off, he said.
Garba, who was represented at the closing ceremony by Head of Quality Assurance, Mrs. Adejoke Adeleke, said the three vessels were consequently escorted to the Lagos Defence Jetty for further investigation and processing in line with applicable laws, adding that the outcome demonstrated the value of combining fisheries technical expertise with the Navy’s maritime enforcement capacity.
Garba added that the FDFA was collaborating with other agencies to curb marine pollution, including plastic waste, which he said killing fish stock rather than driving them to other countries.
He called for stiffer punishment for offenders, noting that they were exploiting weaknesses in fisheries laws to keep committing crimes and endangering aquatic life in the country.
Stakeholders at the event also recommended the introduction of a fishing off-season, as was applicable in South Africa, to preserve nests and fingerlings from being poached and killed by criminally minded individuals.