The Nigerian Navy says it is building commercial war ships
for export within the African countries.
The Chief of Naval Staff (CNS), Vice Adm. Dele Ezeoba, said
this on Tuesday when he inspected the second indigenous patrol ship under
construction at the Naval Dockyard, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Ezeoba expressed confident that the Nigerian Navy was
skilled enough to build patrol ships between 10 and 38 metres in size for
export.
“The Nigerian Navy will no longer buy a ship of between 10
and 12 metres in size, because we have the capacity and capability to build
them in our dockyard,’’ he said.
According to him, the ship under construction is in the same
class with first indigenous 31 metres patrol ship, NSS Andoni, but was
redesigned and upgraded to 38 metres.
Ezeoba said that the ship building business would not only
attract economic value but create job for hundreds of thousands of Nigerians in
the maritime sector and beyond.
He assured that the second indigenous ship would be
delivered to Nigerian Navy by the dockyard for its inauguration into the fleets
latest by June 2014.
At the NSS Beecroft, the Naval Chief also inaugurated four
new patrol shaldag mante boats to enhance operational capability of the base in
addition to the six of their class which were inaugurated in December 2012.
Earlier, while addressing officers and rating at the Naval
Training Command, Apapa, Ezeoba announced plan to build a new Navy barrack in
Abuja in order to address the accommodation problem in the service.
He said that the Naval Headquarters was looking at the
possibility of channelling the lodging allowances of officers and ratings,
which amounted to N3.6 billion annually, into building more houses within a
year.
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