Arms removed from a crate off-loaded from a container at Apapa Port are displayed by authorities in Lagos on October 27, 2010. Nigerian authorities intercepted the shipment of weapons including rocket launchers and grenades at the port in the economic capital of Lagos, an intelligence agency spokeswoman said. – AFP Photo

LAGOS: An illegal shipment of military-grade armaments seized in Nigeria came from a ship that had just left India, officials said Thursday, as investigators continued to trace the weapons’ origins.

Wale Adeniyi, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Customs Service, said Thursday that the MV CMA-CGM Everest dropped the weapons off at Lagos’ busy Apapa Port in July. The 13 shipping containers remained unexamined until Tuesday, when authorities with Nigeria’s secretive State Security Service broke open the sealed boxes and discovered weapons that included 107 mm artillery missiles.

The Everest, a cargo ship registered in the Marshall Islands, is owned by CMA-CGM, a shipping company based in France. In a statement released Thursday, CMA-CGM said the containers holding the weapons were owned by the firm that shipped them. The shipping company said the manifest for the weapons described the shipment as “packages of glasswool and pallets of stone.”

The containers “were supplied, loaded and sealed by the shipper, delivered to the port of loading for transportation and remained sealed during the whole transportation process,” CMA-CGM’s statement read. “The seals were fully intact upon discharge in Nigeria.”

The company declined to comment further, other than to say it has cooperated with Nigerian security services.

Adeniyi said the ship last stopped at Mumbai’s Jawaharlal Nehru Port before coming to Nigeria. He said security officials became suspicious of the containers as the shipment did not have proper documentation.

“The importer and exporter had no address on the system, and we have reasons to believe that the importer’s name given in the import documents is fictitious,” Comptroller-General of Customs Dikko Abdullahi said in a statement.

The origin of the weapons remains unclear, though the rockets and the boxes containing rifle rounds bore English words.

The containers have “been on ground since July. There have been some attempts to clear them” for importation into Nigeria, Adeniyi said. “We understand later that there was an application to re-export them.”

Officials allowed journalists visiting the holding yard just inside of the port’s main gate Wednesday to see the 107 mm rockets, rifle rounds and other weapons seized.

Authorities said the shipment also contained grenades, explosives and possibly rocket launchers, but journalists did not see them.
In the hands of highly trained troops, the 107 mm artillery rockets can accurately hit targets as far as eight and a half kilometers away, killing everything within about 40 feet.

Fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq have used similar rockets against US troops.

The seizure comes as Nigeria, an OPEC-member nation that is one of the top crude oil suppliers to the United States, approaches what could be a highly contested presidential election next year. Security remains a concern in Nigeria as it continues to see targeted killings allegedly committed by a radical Islamic sect in the north and the threat of new violence in its oil-rich southern delta. — AP