Luigi Rizzo, an Italian warship, with about 187 soldiers on-board has berthed at the Tema Port to train the Ghana Navy in what is being described as a collaborative exercise aimed at curbing the growing activities of pirates in the Ghanaians waters and the Gulf of Guinea as a whole.
Available statistics indicate that piracy off the Gulf of Guinea went up to over 200 cases in 2020, with most of these cases being kidnapping and demand for ransom, making the area a haven for the criminals.
It is to help fight these crimes that the Italian Navy, which has been patrolling both the Gulf of Guinea and other waters for months now, have arrived in Ghana to train personnel of the Ghana Navy in a collaborative effort to curb the growing piracy menace.
The 187 members on-board Luigi Rizzo will train their Ghanaian counterparts in a midnight drill on the seas, to impart on them, modernized patrolling and surveillance methods used in combating piracy.
Speaking to the press, Commander Dario Castelli, the Commanding Officer of the Luigi Rizzo warship said there was the need for such collaboration between Ghana and other African counterparts in this training and mission, which will send a strong signal to the pirates about their preparedness to combat them.
The Luigi Rizzo warship is expected to return to Italy in May, after the joint operations. The Italian Free Gate Warship is also expected to hit the gulf in October to undertake similar monitoring and surveillance exercise.
The post Ghana ‘imports’ 187 ‘Abongo Boys’ from Italy appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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