CHAPTER ONE                                                                                                                                                         INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the StudyOver the past two decades, there has been a surge in international concerns about maritime safety and security, with particular attention to the danger that insecurity on the seas pose to global commerce, peace and stability (Ukeje & Mvomo-Ela, 2013). This increased interest has, in turn, coalesced around the need to reflect upon and critically rethink conventional wisdom as it relates to the geopolitics of the seas, and to understand how such feeds into existing policies and actions at the national, regional, continental and global levels.Within the past decade, the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) has become one of the most dangerous maritime areas in the world. According to the Crisis Group report of 2012, maritime insecurity is a regional problem that is compromising the development of this strategic economic area and threatening maritime trade in the short term and the stability of coastal states in the long term. The GoG is a vast, diverse and highly important region. It constitutes about 16 countries that are strung along roughly 6,000 kilometres of unbroken coastline. From the north-western coast of Africa, these countries include Senegal, SierraLeone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Island State of Sao Tome and Principe, Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola on the Southernmost fringes (Agence Congolaise de Presse, 2012:1).In recent times, the GoG waterways have served as a critical gateway to the world for virtually all of its littoral countries which depend on access to the sea for the import and export of goods and services from and to major global markets. According to Ukeje & Mvomo-Ela:With globalization, the region is also fast becoming pivotal to international navigation as a relatively safer, if longer, route connecting the Far East to countries in the North and South of the Atlantic. Given that over 90 percent of global freight is by sea, the GoG has become a veritable sea-route for international trade and commerce, especially now that the shorter Arab Gulf passage is costlier and riskier due towars and piracy in the Middle East and North Africa (Ukeje & Mvomo-Ela, 2013:9). Historically, the GoG was critical to the penetration, advancement and consolidation of the European colonial enterprise and presence in Africa via missionary, commercial and consular activities. Thus, at the peak of European pacification missions in Africa, the GoG was a theatre for unprecedented economic, political, diplomatic and military rivalries among key European Colonial powers jostling to gain access to and control new territories (Ukeje & Mvomo-Ela, 2013).