By Gerard Izuora-Lagos

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, said it is now more determined to purge the nation’s maritime space of pirates and kidnappers.

The Director General of the agency, Mr Ziakede Akpobolokemi who stated this during his end-of-the-year news conference in Lagos said the agency has taken pro-active steps ahead of pirates within the areas and with a promise to continue to frustrate kidnappers in their evil acts.

He said: “If I tell you in the last one month plus, the number of attacks we have foiled in Lagos area and the number of pirates in our custody, it will be alarming; none of them succeeded.”

“Some of them, we have handed them over to the Navy to help us and working with them and civil defense for prosecution; and some of the vessels are in our custody.

“So just take this Lagos area, it will take you the grace of God to go and do an attack because before even the attack, we are going out, we have got information.

“Besides the satellite, we have other systems of operations that we can use in getting people.

“If you kidnap, we will go after you. That is why we are saying people should not pay for hostages to be released.

“We have to go after them, and crush them. Everybody must die one day, that is the truth about it. We must fearlessly approach any person that is causing us problems. And we are going to sustain that.“

Akpobolokemi said NIMASA would continue to sustain its efforts with additional security systems.