Skip to main content

Four Nigerians detained in UK after sneaking aboard ship from Lagos

                                  A cargo ship used to illustrate the story
Four men said to be Nigerians have been taken into police custody in the United Kingdom after they tried to reach that country by sneaking aboard a UK-bound ship which set off in Lagos. They were also accused of ‘threatening’ to harm the crew.
The Essex Police confirmed the detention of the stowaways on Saturday after 25 members of the British Navy’s Special Boat Service were deployed last night to regain the control of the ship.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was said to have sanctioned the operation of the SBS, an elite naval unit in the UK, and the special commandos were flown on a helicopter to the vessel off the coast of Kent near the Thames Estuary.
The ship left Lagos on December 10 and the Nigerian stowaways were found four days ago when they allegedly threatened to harm the crew, according to the owner of 71,000-tonne ship Grande Tema, Napoli-based Grimaldi Lines.
“They were locked in a cabin,” said Paul Kyprianou, a spokesperson for the company Italian shipping company. “But they forced the door, took bars and started threatening the crew. We understand they wanted to reach the UK.”
In what was going to be a deadly risk, the four stowaways are thought to be hoping the ship would sail close to the shore so they could swim to the land.
Police are yet to disclose the identities of the stowaways, except confirming they are all men. They have been detained under the Immigration Act, the Essex Police said in its statement.
The Nigerian Ports Authority in Lagos could not be reached immediately for comments on this report.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Killings: Group demands resignation of Police IG

                              A human rights group, National Intervention Group of Nigeria, has called for the resignation of the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, for alleged loss of morality to continue in office given his inability to tackle killings across the country. The convener of the group, Segun Akinloye, made this call on Tuesday at a press conference in Abuja on the state of the nation. Mr Akinloye said “the lives of Nigerians, even in Nigeria appears nowadays to be cheaper and more worthless than ever before witnessed or recorded in history.” He frowned at the powerlessness of the police to abate the killings, warning that Nigeria may be heading to division and eventual collapse if urgent steps are not taken. He made reference to the killings in Southern Kaduna, Benue, Taraba, Kogi, Plateau and Kaduna St...

Kano Hisbah Board destroys 30 trailer loads of beer worth N150 m

                                   The Kano State Hisbah Board has seized and destroyed 30 trailer loads of beer worth N150 million. In a statement released on Tuesday December 25th, the board’s Public Relations Officer, Adamu Yahaya, said that the cartons of beer were destroyed on Monday evening December 24th after interception at Kalebawa on Danbata Road in Dawakin Tofa area. “The Kano State Law No. 4 of 2004 has banned the manufacture and use of intoxicants in the state. Furthermore, an order was given by a magistrates’ court for us  to go ahead with the exercise,” the public relations officer said. The worth of a trailer load of beer is between N5.2 million and N5.5 million. The sale of beer and its consumption has been banned in Kano state.

Girl, 16, is gang-raped by four men and dumped to slowly die on building site

  A schoolgirl was allegedly gang-raped and killed by four migrants who dumped her on a building site and left her to die.   Desiree Mariottini, 16, from Cisterna di Latina, Italy, was found dead after being drugged and raped in the construction site in the district of San Lorenzo in October 2018.   A witness claims that the 16-year-old girl went to the abandoned site used by homeless people to buy drugs from the four men.     Narcisa Leon, an Ecuadorian woman who squatted in the abandoned site, told the court that she found the victim lying motionless on a dirty mattress.   She had seen the schoolgirl with the four defendants earlier in the day.     She also said that one of the suspects, Mamadou Gara, confirmed in a conversation with her that they had given the victim a strong tranquiliser and that he had then had "sex with her".   The case is ongoing.   The four men, Yusif Salia, Mamadou Gara, Brian Minteh, and Chima Alinno, are ...