The Gulf of Guinea is a large nautical zone that traverses over 6,000 kilometers of coastline, containing a number of islands near West and Central Africa. It’s an important maritime route for commercial shipping lines from Europe and America to West, Central, and Southern Africa.

The Gulf of Guinea records over 90% of global crew kidnapping, piracy, and sea robbery. The latter have increased by 50% with 121 crew members abducted in 2019 compared to 78 in 2018. The kidnapping of the crews is not just a phenomenon faced by one type of ships: all types of vessels have been targeted at various sites from the coast.

Maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea frequently occurs in Apapa, Brass, Bonny Island, and Port Harcourt of Nigeria. There have been reported attacks in Benin’s anchorage, Cameroon’s Idenao and Doula, Ghana’s Takoradi, Ivory Coast’s capital Abidjan, Guinea’s Conakry and Equatorial Guinea axis, the port of Lomé in Togo, and Pointe-Noire in the Republic of Congo and its surroundings.

Piracy acts continue to rise exponentially, owning to petro-piracy, corruption in governance, unemployment, and the proliferation of sophisticated arms. According to the 2020 annual report by the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Maritime Bureau (IMB), the Gulf of Guinea recorded the highest number of crew kidnappings in 2020.

Unemployment and poverty, compounded by weak law enforcement and corruption are the main factors that allow maritime piracy to prosper in the Gulf of Guinea. The most common form of piracy in the gulf and the most common armed robbery at sea is the hijacking of ships, with a focus on kidnappings and ransom payments.

In addition, the Gulf of Guinea’s oil boom has triggered attacks to steal crude oil from tankers and pipelines in order to transfer them illegally to refineries, thus adversely affecting the local economy as well as the environment. The Nigerian Navy is the largest on the coast of West Africa, but still lacks ability to tackle insecurity and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.

The Niger Delta, one of the richest regions in Africa, has been turned into the most underdeveloped and polluted environment in the world.

The Niger Delta is an oil-rich region in Nigeria which has the largest natural gas reserve in Africa and has been generating 90% of Nigeria’s revenues for almost five decades. The oil explorations in the Niger Delta led to a disastrous impact on the diverse ecosystem of mangrove swamps, rain forests, and marine life resulting in contaminated rivers, environmental pollution, grinding poverty, gross corruption, and high drilling cost by multinational oil companies.

Only well-connected individuals benefit from oil production. The Niger Delta, one of the richest regions in Africa, has been turned into the most underdeveloped and polluted environment in the world.

These injustices aroused protest and activism from the inhabitants of the Niger Delta in the late 80s. The leader of activism in the powerhouse of Nigeria’s economy was Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and co-founder of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), who led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of land and water by the multinational petroleum industry, namely the Royal Dutch Shell company.

During the peak of the protest movement, he was accused by the former military junta General Sani Abacha of the brutal murder of the Ogoni chiefs, who Saro-Wiwa accused of acquiescing to the government and Shell. Saro-Wiwa was hanged in 1995, despite international outcry.

In 2009, amnesty was offered to the group by the late Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in return for laying down their arms, a monthly stipend, educational support, receiving vocational training, and a promise to share a significant percentage of the oil revenue with the Niger Delta government.

The promise aimed at building infrastructure such as primary health-care centers and schools. After Yar’Adua’s death, offering amnesty to former militants was stopped by corrupted government officials.

Internal conflicts and border disputes triggered piracy in the Gulf of Guinea as well. In the Gulf of Guinea, for example, politically motivated piracy aligned with the Niger Delta militants and the Southern Cameroon separatists envisions the new nation of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. If this happens, the enclave will become a safe haven for pirates.

Recently, the Turkish cargo ship M/V Mozart sailing from Lagos to Cape Town, 100 nautical miles from the Gulf of Guinea, and northwest of the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe, was attacked, 19 of its members were kidnapped, and one was killed. On February 12, 15 Turkish seamen who had been kidnapped by the pirates were freed.

This is the second time Turkish nationals are abducted in Nigeria. According to the International Maritime Bureau, there are also piracy acts that go unreported. In the last decades, Somali pirates threatened one of the world’s busiest shipping routes, namely the Gulf of Aden. Now, piracy has moved to the Gulf of Guinea.

Securing the Gulf of Guinea is beyond the capacity of any current regional government. A number of existing subcontinent organizations share an interest in maritime security, but they don’t do enough to combat it. Such organizations include the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Maritime Organization of West and Central Africa (MOWCA), and the Gulf of Guinea Commission (GGC).

Since not many efforts are made by member states of these organizations to combat piracy and maintain maritime security, the Gulf of Guinea has no significant contribution to curtailing maritime piracy. Various regional cooperation agreements such as the African Union’s Lome Charter and Yaoundé Code of Conduct have been adopted to combat piracy in the region.

As long as the perception of extra-regional and extra-continental solutions are given priority, the fight against piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the western coast of the Indian Ocean will remain on paper.

International actors that lead the maritime security operations in the Gulf of Aden and the western coast of the Indian Ocean have often used the issue of piracy as a security pretext to realize their hidden interests of maintaining hegemonic power.

Overall, on different occasions, their involvement in the counter-piracy operations on the Somalia coast has been portrayed as a morally justified act to maintain law and order in the strategically important waterway through which more than 33,000 ships navigate annually.

Maritime piracy has existed since ships first went out to sea. However, the issue has been making headlines since the late 1990s, reaching a peak between 2005 and 2008.

The dramatic escalation of maritime piracy along the coasts of Somalia in the 2000s posed a great challenge to the international community which passively stood by and watched.

Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Western Indian Ocean has certain distinguishing characteristics. The first and foremost difference is that unlike pirate attacks in other parts of the world, such as the Straits of Malacca (located between Malaysia and Indonesia), pirate assaults in the Horn of Africa mostly target large vessels and bulk carriers that often transport coal and iron ore, and tanker ships that transport petroleum, chemicals, and crude oil.

In other words, in the Horn of Africa, larger and strategically important ships on international waters are targeted more frequently than smaller vessels.

Certain news outlets associated the acts of piracy in the Gulf of Aden with local governments. Undermining the capacity of regional actors in the fight against piracy serves ulterior motives.

Additionally, the Horn of Africa region was depicted as a lawless region and the regional powers’ commitment to maritime law enforcement was questioned. Certain news outlets associated the acts of piracy in the Gulf of Aden with local governments. Undermining the capacity of regional actors in the fight against piracy serves ulterior motives.

As efforts to develop regional and continental plans to ensure the Gulf of Aden’s maritime security faded away and some earlier initiatives failed, the military presence of international actors was strengthened.

There are two reasons behind the intentions of international actors to establish military bases in the Gulf of Aden. The first motivation is the presence of oil and the Gulf of Aden’s geopolitical significance.

The second is the Western perception of the continental powers’ innate inferiority. Western powers perceive themselves as superior, as redeemers, and as the guarantors of maritime security in the Gulf of Aden and the western coast of Indian Ocean. This, in turn, further legitimatizes their guardianship of the Horn of Africa’s regional actors.

While regional attempts to solve the piracy problem in the Gulf of Aden proved unsuccessful due to legal and political complications, the Western media outlets, political elites, and academics magnified the weak law enforcement, economic desperation, and the absence of a workable legal system in the region, creating the image of an environment in which international actors could and should intervene.

They ignored the capacity of regional powers such as, among others, Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea, and Sudan, in the fight against piracy.

In addition, the international actors’ active maritime law enforcement activities in the coast of Somalia have not been sufficiently observed. Political administrators in Mogadishu, for example, were not empowered by global powers so as to be able to strengthen their country’s internal stability.

So far, the political havoc in Somalia is used as a leverage to justify non-regional global actors’ presence in the western coast of Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden.

The piracy in this region is still a challenge for maritime security and regional and global stability. If not halted, it is likely that piracy in the region will sponsor terrorism.  However, the appropriate solution to overcome the maritime security problems in the Gulf of Aden and the western coast of the Indian Ocean is not the military deployment of global powers.

Rather, a final solution to the long-standing maritime security problem of the region could be achieved through the empowerment of the regional authorities. Meanwhile if the binaries of superior/subordinate and weak/strong are not left behind, politics will continue to generate self-created differences that will not solve the maritime security issue of the Gulf of Aden and the Western Indian Ocean  or any other issue for that matter.