The controversy surrounding the missing ship, MT. African Pride, may be far from being over as The Presidency may have invited the Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Samuel Afolayan, over the matter.
Presidency sources told our correspondent in Abuja on Monday that President Olusegun Obasanjo invited the naval boss to �throw more light on some grey areas about the missing ship.�
Eight naval officers have been arrested over the mysterious disappearance of MT African Pride.
The officers include a Navy Captain and a Commanding Officer. Also picked up are three commanders.
The Commanding Officer and the five others were arrested last week while two other commanders have been in custody since the ship disappeared in August.
Sources said The Presidency invited Afolayan because President Obasanjo was �uncomfortable with the conflicting signals emerging from the Navy high command since the bubble of the missing ship burst early in September.
�We hear that the CNS constituted an in-house Board of Inquiry to get to the root of the matter. But new discoveries and revelations are unfolding every day. The President is certainly uncomfortable with the emerging developments. That might have informed the invitation of the CNS to throw light on some developments,� the source added.
The source pointed out that the most embarrassing was the encounter between the Navy Commodore in charge of signals, Sunday Baje, and his Chief of Operations, Real Admiral Francis Agbiti, at the public hearing into the matter by the House of Representatives last Thursday.
The source said that the President might have felt that a situation where a lower-ranking officer openly called his superior a liar was �most unmilitary.�
When contacted, the Director of Information, Naval Headquarters, Captain Sinebe Hungiapuko, said that the CNS merely went to see the President over an undisclosed matter.
�No, the CNS was not summoned to the Presidency. He went to see the C-in-C, of course, on the C-in-C invitation. It is normal,� he said.
Hungiapuko urged Nigerians to give Navy the benefit of the doubt over the missing ship.
�The BOI is working hard to get at the root of the matter. At the end, the truth will emerge,� he said.
The Navy spokesman stated that the CNS stood by his statement that the ship was handed over to the police in obedience to the directive of the President.
He said that the processes involved in handing over such seized ship were duly followed.
The spokesman, however, said that one of the tasks of the BOI was to establish the origin of the alleged signal that countered the presidential directive.
�We don�t want to join issues with any body. The truth will be established and Nigerians will know what happened,� he insisted.
