November 24, (THEWILL) – Last Monday, The Chairman of Tantita Securities Services Limited, a private security outfit engaged by the petroleum authorities to prevent crude oil theft in Nigeria, Chief Government Epkemupolo, aka Tompolo, accused the Nigeria Navy of aiding and abetting crude oil theft in the Niger Delta.
According to him, naval personnel had severally shot at his men, Department of State Service (DSS) officials and men of the Nigeria Security and Defence Corps (NSCDC), while performing pipeline surveillance duties. He condemned the Navy for preventing the interception of a vessel allegedly used in oil theft in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, recently and decried the face-off between the Navy and Tantita.
“In fact, the Nigerian Navy is frustrating us. The operatives of the navy are colluding with these criminals to swindle the nation,” Tompolo said while receiving the national leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) on a fact-finding mission on Monday.
On Thursday, the Defence Headquarters responded robustly. It dismissed Tantita’s boss’s accusation as “cheap blackmail.”
Dismissing the accusation, Director of Defence Media Operations, Maj.-Gen. Edward Buba harped on the need of all anti-oil theft security outfits to jointly aid the government in its efforts to increase crude oil production so as to boost the dwindling economy fast and offer respite to suffering millions of Nigerians. He pledged on behalf of the armed forces to readily work with all partners to address the lingering areas of doubt and source of conflict.
To buttress his argument that the Navy has been working hard to earn its pips in the fight against oil theft , he reeled out arrests that have been made since October this year alone:171,400 litres of products suspected to be stolen crude oil and 86,400 litres of illegally refined Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), which accounted for the disclosure by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited that the nation’s crude oil production rose to 1.8mbd in October; recovery of an estimated sum of over N921.8m while a total of 51 perpetrators of oil theft were arrested within the period under review.
Troops operating in the Niger Delta, Buba said, also destroyed 78 crude oil cooking ovens, 21 dugout pits, 56 boats, 56 drums, 26 storage tanks and 56 illegal refining sites and recovered two speedboats, one barge, two tricycles, one pumping machine, two walkie-talkies, two outboard engines, nine mobile phones and 12 vehicles.
In that same month, troops recovered 872,070 litres of stolen crude oil and 67,985 litres of illegally refined AGO, Buba said.
As telling as these facts and figures may be, the fact remains that accusations such as Tompolo has made are not new. The fact that such accusations are still being made four years after the NNPCL awarded the pipeline security contract to Tantita Services leaves much to be desired.
In 2019, the then Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike accused an army chief of engaging in oil theft. Recently, Governor Duoye Diri raised the same fears when the Defence Headquarters Joint Monitoring Team, which was created to curb the menace of crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism, paid him a courtesy visit in Government House, Yenagoa in October this year.
Addressing his guests, Diri said, “Before now, there have been accusations that the military and other security agencies were involved in oil theft.
“It is very sad for us to hear that our own military is accused of involvement in oil theft. It is as if there is no end to it and the sabotage in our region. If security forces that are supposed to work with civilian authorities to bring this to an end are also involved, then there will be no end to it.
“But it is the military that is now taking the lead among other security agencies. I can see the police and the NSCDC also represented in the committee. So, it means we are all now closing ranks.”
We hope the governor’s assessment and the Defence Headquarters Monitoring Team represents the new, true picture of things on the way forward.
The fact that Defence Headquarters has put a Joint Monitoring Team in place speaks volumes about the renewed commitment of the armed forces to walk their talk. However, we call on the various security outfits combating oil theft to sink their differences and work together to eradicate this scandal.
