By Godwin Oritse NIMASA THE recent anti-piracy law assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari did not take the menace of stowaways into ...
By Godwin Oritse
THE recent anti-piracy law assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari did not take the menace of stowaways into consideration as there is no single sanction for stowaways in the statutes book.
Disclosing this to Vanguard Maritime Report at the just concluded ninth Admiralty law for judges held in Lagos, one of the resource persons, Dr. Adewale Olawoyin, informed that nothing about stowaways was captured in the law and called for an advocacy to ensure that the aspect was dealt with in the law book.
Speaking on the development, Engr Rotimi, Fashakin, Executive Director, Marine and Operations, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, said the issue of stowaways cannot be treated like pirates and sea robbers that carry arms.
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Fashakin said the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, was meant to deal with the issue of stowaways adding that their exclusion from the anti-piracy law was deliberate.
He explained that stowaways were not criminals as such adding that they are only running away from their economic situations. He also said that treating stowaways like pirates and sea robbers will be unfair as they do not carry arms on board vessels.
He stated: “For me, it is not good that we lump two different issues together; look at UNCLOS Convention, is the international law that deals with every form of criminality at sea.
“Stowaways are people who want to get away, maybe for economic reason, from their own jurisdiction to another jurisdiction; they should not be brought into a legislation that is clearly for arm carrying criminals. That law should not lump these sets of people together; the exclusion of stowaways from the anti-piracy legislation was really not an oversight; it was a well-reasoned law.
“There should be a special law in their case and immigration has a way of dealing with that when they are apprehended. When they are arrested, the immigration service will do a proper profiling to know if they are Nigerians or aliens; if they are found to be aliens they are immediately deported; but if they are Nigerians they will be handed over to the Police for prosecution.
“The act of law making is a very delicate one; even in Nigeria right now, we are moving away from saying we have a prison service to correctional centers; that is where the world is moving towards. The world is trying to ensure that there is a different orientation so that everybody is not criminalized.”
The post NIMASA explains why stowaways not captured in anti-piracy law appeared first on Vanguard News.
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