With Nigeria as one of the countries in the Gulf of Guinea faced with challenges associated with organized domestic and transnational crimes, a one-day national conference on organized crime in Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea was held on Friday, April 28, 2023, to address related salient issues, The event took place on Friday, April 28, 2023 at Land Mark Hotel, Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Theme of the conference was, “Toward Strengthening Collective Effort Under The Network On Organized Crime In Nigeria And Gulf of Guinea (NOCINAG) To Address Challenges of Domestic and Transnational Crime In the Region”.
Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC-Nigeria) facilitated the event sponsored by Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and Resilience Fund.
Participants examined crimes relating to pipeline vandalism, crude oil theft, artisanal refining, illegal bunkering, kidnapping, banditry, insurgency, racketeering, cybercrimes, drugs/human trafficking, arms smuggling, sea pirates, Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUUF) in the Gulf of Guinea (along with other fraudulent activities such as environmental crimes and illegal logging).
YEAC-Nigeria, executive director, Fyneface Dunamene, said the conference was designed to look into the character of mafia-like cartels comprising of criminal minded non-state actors that apparently, have established wide networks to operate illegal governance structures; holding control across both governable and ungoverned spaces that transverse national borders to carry out transnational organized criminal activities.
In the course of their activities human rights are violated, and they profit illegally at great public expense, while damaging the national image of countries in the Gulf of Guinea –Nigeria, Republic of Angola, Republic of Cameroon, Republic of the Congo (Congo Brazzaville), The Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo Kinshasa), Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Gabon, and the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe. The scope of the conference covers the following areas:
- Strengthening community-based advocacy in the Niger Delta through multi-stakeholder engagement to combat organized crime;
- Serving as a platform for intelligence gathering and information sharing with security formation to counter organized crime violent extremism;
- Providing think-tank base for research and serving as a resource centre on organized crime, while constituting a mitigation mechanism for same;
- Building interventionist platform for civil society actors to expand participation through wide-based partnership linkages around the Gulf of Guinea Commission’s advocacy effort –for contributing needed input, and rallying support for combating transnational organized crime;
- Serving as a training hub promoter for capacity development to build potentials at local, national and transnational level in strengthening effort against organized crime;
- Partnering and collaborating with other network formations (as state and no-state bodies) to mitigate organized crime, promote peace and security in Nigeria and the entire Gulf of Guinea;
The event specially highlighted other critical contributions of YEAC in Nigeria, including advocacy efforts and propositions already captured in a report, titled: “The Doctrine Of PACORDI and Other Oil Theft Mitigation Mechanisms for Nigeria” aimed at countering organized crime acts of oil theft, artisanal refining, illegal bunkering and associated environmental pollution (including, but not limited to, the “black soot” hazard).
Participants were drawn from the security circle, government agencies, oil companies, policymakers, academic institutions, the diplomatic community, the organized private sector, media practitioners, religious bodies, ethnic nationalities, the civil society and persons from host communities to extractive/non-extractive operators, among others.
CONCERNS RAISED AT THE FORUM
The forum addressed the following concerns over six core objectives and other related areas:
- Low development of effective, non-violent ways of raising the profile of community priorities to adopt constructive and sustainable approaches in handling issues of social destabilization;
- Virtual absence of generally approved/adopted campaign strategies against organized crime manifesting as oil theft, artisanal refining, human trafficking and environment/social pollution in Nigeria (and other countries);
- Low concern around promoting sustainable/gainful enterprising for youths toward combating rising wave of organized crime in Nigeria and the entire Gulf of Guinea;
- Need to promote the formulation of services that would be strongly benefiting from critical intellectual input/related resource sources;
- Need to leverage on existing local and international partnerships, contacts and networks toward finding practical solutions to problems related to organized crime;
- Need to improve support services to complement state and non-state efforts in combating organized crime and,
- Need to focus more on alternative livelihood promotion, especially in the fields of green energy generation to empower youths as a way of creation an orientation away from criminality.
OBSERVATIONS
Some challenges related to combating organized crime in the Gulf of Guinea were covered during the conference proceedings with the following observations:
The invisibility of modern day crime (and of criminals) has made traditional methods of crime mitigation (becoming more and more) unreliable;
- New technologies (such as satellite surveillance mechanisms) are yet to evolve to improve the effort of crime investigation and help address current criminal challenges in Nigeria;
- Regional collaborations are yet to crystallize into helpful ways of supporting crime mitigation across borders;
- Organized crime is complex and can be carried out by distant operators who may also be literally invisible;
- Exploitation of economic benefits has continued to serve colonial/post-colonial interests, which defy crime prevention values and are rather, promoting crime perpetration);
- There is a linkage between the natural resource endowment of the Gulf of Guinea region and the scramble for profiteering that can include deviation to transnational organized crime;
- Transnational organized crime is a problem that affects all of us among the populations in the (Gulf) region;
- There is a co-relationship between created conflicts in conflict-afflicted areas and the formations/sustenance of organized crime in the (Gulf);
- There is usually a collaboration between international crime syndicates and Nigerian state/corporate officials who wield high-level influence in the industries related to the problem of organized crime;
- State effort in setting up mere task force outfits cannot automatically translate into desirable result, but may even benefit the few corrupt/thieving members of society;
- Environmental pollution taking place around the Gulf of Guinea is contributing to minimize ecological (or natural resources) services that traditionally benefit the people of the region;
- International interests approximating to superpower struggle form part of insecurity and related challenges across Africa’s coastal regions (including the Gulf of Guinea);
- National security strategy efforts are weak generally –as perpetrators of international crime are usually part of the formulation of our strategic mechanisms; and,
- Low capacity of political leadership (particularly, of elected leaders) naturally give rise to weak state effort to provide effective governance around organized crime management.
RECOMMENDATIONS
After rigorous deliberations, the conference made the following recommendations:
- The Federal Government should fast track effort in setting up an effective task force against organized crime;
- FGN should no longer delay the establishment of the modular refineries promised across the Niger Delta states to support sustainable youth empowerment priorities;
- We should adopt new innovative ways of combating crime to be able to address the problem of organized crime and stop perpetrators of such crimes now carried out in sophisticated ways;
- Cultural orientation must be revisited to recapture value dimension to prevent increasing penchant for crime;
- Tactful mitigation of organized crime must go beyond mere declaration (statements), and involve seriously committed mindset and political will;
- Discussions must be sustained and expanded in an effort to seek solution against transnational organized crime;
- The state (government) must make genuine effort to provide services that address the needs of the grassroots population in other to make the masses happy;
- The Gulf of Guinea membership is still expanding to include more countries, and the current efforts to secure the region (and combat crime) must be responsive to related emerging trends;
- Concerted effort should be made to continue this engagement to ensure that strong persuasion messages can emerge to help improve crime mitigation contributions;
- A coast-guard mechanism should be established to support the effort of maritime security enforcement and ensure related benefits are maximized;
- Existing state security agencies should be properly funded to ensure they have capability to carry out legitimate duties of providing security and combating organized crime;
- Government’s role in combating organized crime is prime and must be put to play if effort to mitigate the menace posed by organized crime will succeed.
- There should be coastal community development area agencies to cater to the special security and development needs of people living there to strengthen partnership advantages from even their disadvantaged conditions and,
- Legal reform-based advocacy and governance oversight role must be intensified towards combating this organized crime menace.
CONCLUSION
There is a general consensus that the effort of mitigating organized crime should be sustained with continuous engagement which would be expanded to involve more collaboration from a wide spectrum of actors across urban and non-urban settings–and across state/non-state bodies. Also, more demand from individual citizens and groups for good governance practices must be sustainably carried out to promote beneficial results.
