Nigerian Navy: Attaining self-reliance in shipbuilding, maintenance

In a few days time, President Muhammadu Buhari, will commission NNS UNITY, the newly acquired Offshore Patrol Craft (OPV) from China.

This is the second China-built OPV to join its sister OPV, NNS CENTENARY earlier commissioned.  Both of are expected to join the fight against all forms of illegalities in the national offshore oil and gas installations.

The remarkable thing about the commissioning is that, along with the China-built OPV, the  President will also commission several home-designed-and-built ships, boats and other crafts by the Naval Dockyard d in Lagos and  Port Harcourt.

In my forthcoming book ‘Wisdom of the Admirals’, there is abundant evidence of how the prescient thoughts and proposals by the founding admirals could make the nation self-reliant in ship building and other maritime arts.

That the Nigerian Navy can now build some class of ships for protecting the nation’s territorial waters did not happened by accident.  The founding admirals and their friends foresaw the need to be able to build, maintain, repair and refit ships in this dockyard.

In the 60 years since the inception of the Nigerian Navy, we have acquired ships from many ship-building nations.  The early ships were by transfer from the United Kingdom.

In the 70s, Nigeria started acquiring ships for the National Shipping Lines.  The period also coincided with the Festac 77 fever when Nigeria hosted the Black World.

The Nigerian National Shipping Lines which started operations with four second-hand vessels in 1959 had increased its fleet to 15 vessels by 1971.  Additional 19 Combo vessels were ordered, with the first of the new ships delivered in 1976/77.

This was a time when Nigeria was moving to be a military sea power and maritime power in international trade.  The Nigerian Navy bought many capital ships, a missile-capable frigate, corvettes, fast attack craft, mine-countermeasure vessels (MCMVs), and landing ships, among others.  These ships were from the UK, Germany, France, Italy and other foreign shipyards. But something was out of sync.

By the time these ships were delivered, there were logistics problems, especially in the maintenance, repairs and refit facilities.  This was what   founding admirals, saw way back in 1964.

Today, the Nigerian Navy has found an ingenious way to minimise the negative impact of the current recession by looking inwards.

And in doing so, the Navy hopes to serve the needs of the nation and reach out to West and Central African navies, maritime organisations, including  oil and gas industries with the products of research and development at its Naval Dockyards in Lagos and Port Harcourt.

The story of the NN vision to design and build home-grown ships and crafts started many years ago.  When the founding admirals acquired the Naval Dockyard over 50 years ago as a strategic asset from Elder Dempster Shipping Lines, they were guided by five strategic considerations:

1)      That a well-equipped, well-funded and well-managed dockyard is one of the essential ingredients of an effective navy.

2)      That the Navy needs to build large numbers of small patrol craft and boats to protect our  maritime assets.

3)      That the Navy and country should work towards self-reliance in shipbuilding in view of disappointments from Nigeria’s traditional suppliers in times of critical needs;

4)      That in times of cash-crunch, the Navy will be spared the problems of availability, affordability and maintainability by having home-built platforms;

5)      That the growing cooperation among African navies, necessitated by the need to fight common enemies like sea pirates, poachers, crude oil thieves require standard patrol craft now being built by the Naval Dockyard;

To realise the five strategic objectives, the Federal Government, through the Ministry of Defence, embarked on a massive development of the Naval Dockyard at Wilmot Point, Victoria Island, Lagos and Port Harcourt.

The result is that from 1990s, the Dockyard and Shipyard in Port Harcourt started to do for ships with defects what hospitals do for sick people.

Today, the Naval Dockyard Limited has advanced from ship maintenance to ship building. The first of its home-grown technology, a Seaward Defence Boat (SDB), NNS ANDONI, was commissioned in 2012.

A sister ship of ANDONI class, already named NNS KARADUWA is expected to be commissioned this month by President Buhari.

Also to be commissioned is the ocean-going tug, NNS CDR E UGWU built by the Naval Shipyard, Port Harcourt.  The Naval Shipyard Limited had earlier built a ferry NNS SAOKA LAFIA.
While we celebrate these modest achievements, the government should remember that in spite of the many security challenges on land, the sea will continue to be Nigeria’s centre of gravity for a very long time to come.The government should devote more resources to meet the short and long term needs of the Navy.

Olutunde Oladimeji, is a retired Commodore of the Nigerian Navy