Nigerian Navy (NN) will continue to protect the maritime domain of the country against any form of criminal activities.

Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ibas, said this while inaugurating the service Strategic Directive (SD) 02 in Abuja, saying SD-02 was a continuation of SD01 being part of his strategic plans to take NN to greater heights.

Ibas said the target of SD-02 was to sustain efficient and effective operational presence at sea to create a secure maritime environment for national prosperity, saying it was also to build on the credible NN manpower development to achieve optimal professional capability of personnel, as well as consolidate on the reinvigorated planned maintenance system for enhanced operational readiness.

According to him, the SD-02 was to sustain the partnership with relevant stakeholders and institutions both locally and internationally under the principle of burden sharing, saying to leverage requisite motivation and support for personnel, sustained regional security mechanism to enhance maritime security; to continue to demand the right attitude, high standard of discipline and selflessness from all personnel at all times.

He stressed the need for NN to continue to efficiently monitor and maintain effective control of activities over the nation’s maritime domain, as well as focus on reactivation of governing Boards of professional training schools.

Ibas said further that his administration would also review NN policy on operational training, type and on-the job training, as well as reactivate courses/programmes for engineering personnel.

“Commencement of manpower training in civil/military relations and information management for take-off of directorate of civil/military relations;

“Commencement of manpower training in museum and archiving for smooth take-off of directorate of NN museum and archives;

“Development of doctrines on NN counter-terrorism crisis response and self propelled water/barges for enhanced NN brown water operations in designated choke point regimes.

“Development of a boat handling competition handbook. Development of training record book for officer’s training. Partnership with international Aviation College (IAC) Ilorin training of own pilots and provision of course curricula.

The Nigerian Navy Strategic Development (SD-01) was inaugurated on Aug. 31, 2015.

This was to emplace a strategic directive for the attainment of NN goals as encapsulated in the revised NN transformation plan 2011-2020.

Also, the need to build a credible NN capable of discharging its constitutional roles and assigned tasks in a sustainable efficient and effective manner led to the promulgation of the CNS Strategic Directive 2015.