The emergence of Dr. Paul Adalikwu, a Nigerian, as the Secretary-General of the 25-member Maritime Organization of West and Central Africa comes with a lot of implications for the country in particular, maritime business in the Gulf of Guinea and, indeed, the international maritime community in general.
There couldn’t be a more auspicious time for Nigeria to be in the saddle in an organization that is pivotal to the achievement of the objective of championing the interests of the Gulf of Guinea, regarding international maritime business. The country took the major step of tackling insecurity in its waterways up to the Gulf of Guinea with the rollout, by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency , of the Integrated National Security and Waterways Protection Infrastructure, otherwise known as the Deep Blue Project in February 2021.
In June 2013, the 25 countries within ECOWAS, ECCAS and the Gulf of Guinea signed a joint declaration in Yaoundé, Cameroun, known as the Yaoundé Architecture, to allow for collaboration among the countries in the fight against piracy and all forms of maritime criminality in their territorial waters.