[News] The day the pirates came

[vagabondl.]

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For Sudeep Choudhury, work on merchant ships promised adventure and a better life.

But a voyage on an oil tanker in West Africa, in dangerous seas far from home, would turn the young graduate's life upside down.

His fate would come to depend on a band of drug-fuelled jungle pirates - and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King.

 

The MT Apecus dropped anchor off Nigeria's Bonny Island shortly after sunrise. Sudeep Choudhury was at the end of a draining shift on deck. Looking towards land, he could make out dozens of other ships. On the shoreline beyond them, a column of white oil storage tanks rose out of the ground like giants.

He had breakfast and then made two phone calls. One to his parents - he knew they worried about him, their only child - and one to his fiancee, Bhagyashree. He told her that everything was going to plan and that he would call her again later that day. He then clambered into bed for a sleep.

It was 19 April, 2019. The small, ageing oil tanker and its crew of 15 had spent two days sailing south from the port of Lagos to the Niger Delta, where oil was discovered in the 1950s by Dutch and British businessmen seeking a swift fortune. Although he knew that vicious pirates roamed the labyrinthine wetlands and mangroves of the delta, Sudeep felt safe that tropical South Atlantic morning. Nigerian navy boats were patrolling and the Apecus was moored just outside Bonny, seven nautical miles from land, waiting for permission to enter port.

The warm waters of the Gulf of Guinea, which lap across the coastline of seven West African nations, are the most dangerous in the world. It used to be Somalia, but now this area is the epicentre of modern sea piracy. Of all the seafarers held for ransom globally last year, some 90% were taken here. Sixty-four people were seized from six ships in just the last three months of 2019, according to the International Maritime Bureau, which tracks such incidents. Many more attacks may have gone unreported.

 

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The bountiful oil found here could have made the people of the delta rich, but for most it has been a curse. Spills have poisoned the water and the land, and a fight over the spoils of the industry has fuelled violent crime and conflict for decades. In the villages above the pipelines that have netted billions for the Nigerian government and international oil companies, life expectancy is about 45 years.

Militant groups with comic book names like the Niger Delta Avengers have blown up pipelines and crippled production to demand the redistribution of wealth and resources. Oil thieves siphon off thick black crude and process it in makeshift refineries hidden in the forest.

The level of violence in the delta ebbs and flows - but the threat is always there.

 

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