A fishing community under the auspices of ‘Watch Out Fishermen Coorperative’ in Ibaka, Mbo Local Council of Akwa Ibom have protested against incessant attacks and abduction of its members by suspected Sea pirates
The protesters stormed Ibaka beach, venue of the protest as early as 10am in the morning chanting solidarity songs and displaying placards of various inscriptions.
The placards carried various inscriptions such as “FOB Ibaka is sleeping,”President Buhari, do the needful, we are tired of paying ransom”, Federal government and Nigerian Navy stop the sea piracy” etc
Speaking while addressing the protesters the chairman of the association Mr. Effiong Numah expressed disappointment that despite series of petitions the state government and security agencies have remained adamant to their plights.
Numah explained that they decided to protest because they were no longer safe on the waterways adding that they have lost over 23 Out boat engines while ten of their members have been kidnapped this year alone.
“We are here for a protest based on what we have been experiencing in the past years. After series of petitions and complaints to the Government they paid deaf ear . That prompted us to organise this protest. this year alone our cooperative have lost 23 Out boat engines, to the Sea pirates. They have kidnapped 10 of our fishermen, demanding huge amount of money.
“We have notified Government agencies security agencies, it was only one week that the Forward Operation Base carried out what they called major patrol and in that one week we had a little peace.” He explained.
One of the fishermen who spoke emotionally on the situation Mr Effiong Edet, lamented that the hoodlums have adopted a new strategy of seizing the out boat engines and also kidnaping the fishermen along with the engine.
According to him a director in one of the companies was kidnapped in April , this year amd was only released after payment of N46m as ransom
“The challenge has got to the climax because they are now after our lives. We have been enduring the attacks but since last year they started abducting our fishermen, the situation has been frightening.
“They first abducted a fishermen from one company here and for fear of what their fate will be in the hands of the abductors we pleaded with them and they collected ransom. And this year, in April they followed our fisherman, up to Cameroon and abducted a director, and collected ransom of N46m. That was when we down tooled for about a month and two weeks.
“As we speak to you now we have petitioned AIG zone6, NNS Jubilee Ikot Abasi, we have petitioned FOB here and all the security agencies and government agencies we feel can come to our help all to no avail”
” Last Tuesday they seized four engines and abducted four fishermen, demanding for 10million. We pleaded and after exhausting all our money only yesterday they released them, the person that we sent to go pay the ransom they withheld him, so we pleaded for his release.” He said.
