ABUJA— IT was a day of buck passing at the House of Representatives yesterday as the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Tafa Balogun told the House of Representatives Committee on Navy investigating the disappearance of a ship, M.V. African Pride detained on suspicion of oil bunkering that the ship was in the custody of the Nigerian Navy and should be held responsible for its disappearance.
The Inspector-General of Police who led a team of senior police officers including two Deputy Inspectors-General said the ship which was one of the twenty one ships arrested by Naval authorities last year was never handed over to the Police. Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Samuel Afolayan told the committee on Tuesday that the police should be held responsible for the disappearance of the ship because he had in compliance with a presidential directive handed over custody of the missing ship and twenty others to Police authorities.
But the Inspector-General of Police who appeared confident while testifying under oath before the committee yesterday denied any culpability on the part of the Police.
“The ship M.V. African pride was never in the custody of the Nigeria Police. It is important to restate that at no time were the vessels handed over to the police. The vessels had all along been in the custody of the Navy. If there was any such hand over (as claimed by the Navy) let them produce the handing and taking over notes as produced by the two parties,” he said. He told the committee that “the vessels in question were on the high sea where the police has no access to them. The constitution of this country has not been re-written to give Police access to the high seas,” he said.
The Inspector-General maintained that his first knowledge of the incidence “was on the pages of the newspapers,” arguing that “if the Navy had not been in custody of the ship, what put pressure on them to put up a search deploying helicopters and ships” after the ship was declared missing. The chief of Naval staff had explained on Tuesday that his decision to deploy helicopters and ships to search for the missing ship was borne out of patriotic duty as Chief of Naval Staff.
The Inspector-General of Police revealed that there had been clandestine moves to free some of the detained ships and crew by some persons but he rebuffed the moves and reported to the president who supported him. He cited the case of an alleged legal opinion forwarded to his office by a Ministry of Justice official in Enugu advising the police authorities to release a detained ship and crew being held in Enugu, M.T. Tina.
“I think it is when the legal process failed that the planners resorted to the clandestine move of stealing the ship out of Nigeria’s territorial waters,” he alleged. The IGP alleged that while the Police took “constructive custody” of some of the crew members of the detained ship, it did not take custody of any of the ships, saying that up till this moment, Naval personnel are still guarding the ships. He revealed that when his men moved to take custody of the suspects and the ship, the local Naval authorities refused to oblige them saying there was no directive from Naval headquarters to that effect.
The IGP explained that when a signal was sent eventually it expressly stated that only the crew members should be handed over to the police. Even at that, the police chief added, seven crew members were left on the missing MV African Pride by the Naval authorities to “maintain the ship.” The selection of who should be left on the ship, he said was at the discretion of the Navy. The Inspector-General of Police further stated that as recent as two weeks before the disappearance of the ship, Naval authorities took some staff of the Russian Embassy to visit the crew members left aboard the ship. “I presume that the seven crew members left aboard the ship might have colluded to move the ship away,” he said. Mr. Balogun said that he had contacted the Interpol in neighbouring countries to assist in the recovery of the ship if found in their territorial waters. The hearing continues today.
