Kidnap in the Gulf of Guinea

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Is there a new piracy crisis afflicting Africa's shipping lanes? And should the merchant ships in the region now be armed? Four men boarded a Turkish-crewed container ship out at sea in the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa on Saturday - they killed a crew member and took 15 hostages. Robert Peters, a senior analyst for west Africa at Ambrey, a company which boasts the largest number of maritime security personnel in ports across the globe, tells Ed Butler what happened. Ed also speaks to Munro Anderson, who works for Dryad Global, another security firm that specialises in shipping in the area who says he doesn't think the Nigerian government is doing enough to stop kidnappings in the region. But Amy Jadesimi who is the MD of Ladol, a free trade area within Nigeria's largest port in Lagos, says they are doing quite a good job. And Professor Anja Shortland is a lecturer in political economy at Kings College London. She's also written a book, Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business, in which she analyses how the problem of piracy around the east African coast off Somalia was effectively contained. Ed asks her if there are lessons to be learnt from that experience.

(Photo: Nigerian special forces sail to intercept pirates as part of an operation in 2019, Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.
0:05.8	Coming up, the rise of a new kidnap and ransom trade off Nigeria's southern coast.
0:11.9	Where have the kidnapped sailors been taken?
0:14.8	They've likely been taken back to the Niger Delta in Nigeria.
0:19.0	They may be transferred between camps as the pirates move them to a
0:23.9	secure location. 95% of the world's kidnaps at sea are happening in the Gulf of Guinea these
0:30.0	days. Is it time to arm the merchant ships in the region? Pirates aren't stupid. They're not
0:36.6	great risk takers. They take some risks, but they don't
0:40.2	take stupid risks. And if they get fired at, they draw back. That's the economics of piracy,
0:47.0	Business Daily from the BBC. It was a simple and unusually brutal attack, according to the news reports, four men
0:57.8	boarding a Turkish crude container ship way out at sea in the Gulf of Guinea and West Africa.
1:04.5	They killed a crew member as they grabbed hostages on Saturday.
1:08.6	This is a particularly tragic attack.
1:14.1	This isn't unprecedented, though, in the Gulf of Guinea.
1:20.5	They are violent, and they have used firearms to subdue crew members.
1:22.3	That's the voice of Robert Peters.
1:25.3	He's a senior analyst for West Africa at Ambray. It's a security firm which boasts the largest number of maritime
1:28.5	security personnel in ports around the world. His team supply armed advisors to shipping firms in a range
1:36.0	of West African ports. In the past, the attacks appeared to target tankers in what was what used to be called petro piracy.
1:46.7	But nowadays, actually, the number of tankers as a proportion of the whole which are targeted is less than half.
1:53.1	What we're seeing is these criminal syndicates are looking for crew members to kidnap for ransom.
1:59.0	Usually they don't kill crew members because, after all, they're in it to ransom crew members to kidnap for ransom. Usually they don't kill crew members because after all,
	...

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