Security threats within Gulf of Guinea region pose danger to Ghana’s peace – CASA

Researchers at the Centre for Advanced Strategic Analysis (CASA) say imminent security threats in the Gulf of Guinea region, which Ghana falls within, pose serious threats to the country's peace due to weak security framework within the region. This revelation was contained in a report, Security Challenges in the Gulf of Guinea and Implications for Ghana’s New Oil Find, published in an oil and gas publication this month. According to CASA, even before Ghana’s oil find and subsequent exploration activities in the Cape 3 Points area, issues such as drugs trade, fall outs of increased interest of the UK and the US, and piracy were rife within the Gulf of Guinea region, but these issues are likely to compound and spill over to Ghana in the wake of its oil exploration activities. “West Africa has since 2005 been known to be a major transit route for drugs destined for Europe and the Americas. All the countries that share the gulf have had exposure of one sort or another to drugs”, the report said. According to the report, there have been serious incidents of South American drug lords operating in Ghana with cocaine seizures offshore. The report also cited the case of the seizure of cocaine on the MV Benjamin “and a host of other arrests, related to drugs” as well known facts. Citing a security expert, the report said “about a quarter of Europe’s annual consumption of 135 to 145 tonnes of cocaine, with a wholesale value of some $1.8 billion, was transiting from producers in Latin America via West Africa”. As a result of this, the authors, Mr. Samuel Aning and Prof Kwaku Appiah-Adu, posited that the overall stability within the region could be seriously undermined by the activities of drug lords in support of their operations. “In Ghana, the drug issue is likely to become a greater challenge as the country struggles to maintain effective law and order. With the expectation that petrodollars would be pouring into the country’s economy on a consistent basis as from December 2010, the cartels would begin to target not only the country as a transit point but nationals and foreigners within the oil industry as they would be earning enough to sustain dependence on drugs”, the report stated. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) for instance states that the West Africa region had become a large cocaine stockpiling location. The transit point has been the Gulf of Guinea which is collectively shared by a number of countries. Being a major shipping lane, this presents serious security challenges not only to legitimate businesses but to oil and gas installations offshore as well. The authors also state that while US and UK assistance is welcome in all Gulf of Guinea states, there is increasing danger that the next stage of the war on terrorism would be fought within the gulf region. “The friends and suppliers of oil to the US could increasingly come under attack as a means of punishing the US or its allies. If it is established that the source of oil comes from this region, it is likely the region would see more attacks offshore,” they stated. BBC’s Will Ross has indicated that a recent video coming from Boko Haram, the Nigerian terrorist group, in which they have held a French national hostage, suggests the terrorist “organisation is metamorphosing from being a local group with a mainly Nigerian agenda into a more international ihadist outfit”. This certainly has serious implications for countries close to Nigeria and who are allies of the United States. According to the CASA report, offshore installations are not adequately protected with navies because most of the gulf region states “are not in a position to effectively police such installations”. They attribute the weak naval protection of offshore installations in Ghana and other states in the gulf region largely to a lack of manpower and logistical support. Nigeria’s Navy is regarded as having the best resource in the region, but the report states that “even with the manpower and logistics that it has, the Nigerian Navy has had it difficult trying to control the attacks on installations within the Niger Delta". CASA’s report also states that the Gulf of Guinea has increasingly become an area of security concern for maritime and international security experts due to several incidence of piracy. They say the poorly functioning governments and inadequate resources to support surveillance account for the inability of states within the gulf region to take effective action against piracy in the region. Although the incidence of piracy is yet to hit Ghana, the researchers believe, the closeness of countries it has happened in to Ghana makes the issue a significant security threat to the country. CASA states that as talks about transparency, revenue sharing, and the use to which oil proceeds can be put are appropriate, policy makers within Ghana’s Ministries of Finance and Energy must not fail to realise that there are far more critical considerations that must be critically looked at.