Opinions

Oil robbers ‘behind my house’

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2 years ago

Much has been said about the bombing of the oil theft vessel MT Tratu II by the Nigerian security. Yet the incident also raised collateral issues which have been the bane of the oil producing areas of Nigeria. One of such issues is the exact location and in which of the oil producing states is the oil well located.

This becomes necessary in our collective interrogation of pervasive malfeasance in the Nigerian oil industry and unrest bordering on inter-ethnic or interstates mutual suspicions.

In a statement on the incident, the NNPC Limited Chief Corporate Communications Officer, Garba Deen Muhammad said, among others as follows:

“Following the receipt of credible intelligence, a private security contractor engaged by the NNPC Limited, Messrs Tantita Security Services intercepted a suspicious vessel with a cargo of crude oil on board on July 7, 2023.

“The vessel, MT TURA II (IMO number: 6620462), owned by a Nigerian registered company, HOLAB MARITIME SERVICES LIMITED with registration number RC813311, was heading to Cameroun with the cargo on board when it was apprehended at an offshore location (Latitude: 5.8197194477543235°, Longitude: 4.789002723991871°) with the Captain and Crew members on board.

“Preliminary investigations revealed that the crude oil cargo on-board was illegally sourced from a well jacket offshore Ondo State, Nigeria. There was no valid documentation for the Vessel or the Crude Oil Cargo on-board at the time of the arrest.

“Further investigation into the activities of the vessel at the NNPC Ltd. Command and Control Centre also revealed that the vessel has been operating in stealth mode for the last twelve (12) years. The last reported location of the vessel was Tin Can Port in July 2011.

“Details of this arrest and the outcomes of the investigations were escalated to the appropriate government authorities, upon which it was concluded to destroy the vessel to serve as a strong warning and deterrent to all those participating in such illegal activities to cease and desist”.

When Asari Dokubo stormed the Aso Villa and announced to the world that the Nigerian security system is complicit in oil racketeering, most Nigerians ignored his message and rather concentrated on the manner of its delivery, sitting with the coat of arms and the insignia of our sovereign authority behind him.

Asari Dokubo has not only been proven patriotic in his vituperations, he has just been vindicated by this questionable strike where the Nigerian Navy High Command felt called upon to address a press conference on the prowess of Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited, TSSNL, a private pipeline surveillance company, operated by Tompolo.

From reports, GOC, as we call Tompolo in the Niger Delta, and his boys have already completed the task and could effectively cripple the vessel for investigations into its nefarious economic activities before the questionable air bombing. Only those involved will be taken in by the story that the bombing of the vessel and its attendant destruction of evidence for possible prosecution was to send deterrent signals to other investors in such illicit enterprise.

Those so concerned about destruction of evidence which would have been useful for prosecution, ought to know that the dramatis personae are ad idem in that regards in their mutual interests. It is jàmbá tà fún jàmbá rà. What else is an armed robber looking for when caught and his weapons destroyed. Your headache in this episode is poke-nosing into whether the parties on both sides are comrade villains.

I will rather queue behind His Majesty, Bubaraye Dakolo, Chairman of the Bayelsa State Council of Traditional Rulers and author of Riddles of Oil Theft in Nigeria, who in his didactic interview with the Arise Television bemoaned the economic loss to Nigeria in destroying such volume of oil equivalent to the Nigerian daily production of 1.8 Millions barrel and the environmental pollution caused thereby. In addition to the concealment of evidence for reasons alleged by concerned commentators, it also underlines our objectionable attitude to common public patrimony that the NNPC Ltd, owner of the crude in trust for Nigerians would allow such volume to be wasted even if it does not feel bound, for obvious reasons, to prosecute the criminals.

For those of us in the Niger Delta, the territory is not such a hidden place to provide a haven for criminals. If the locals are unwilling to assist security forces, it is simply because they know more than Government and its agencies in the racket which leaves the people bearing the brunt of corruption in high places. . Rather than indulge in the futility of a search for the unhidden thief, they would seek the little they could get even if hundreds of them die in the inferno of pipeline bursting mole-mole operations.

The Ondo State portion of the Niger Delta spanning over 100 kilometres of shoreline from the Lekki Peninsula in the west to Oghoye at the mouth of the Benin River in the boundary with Delta state in the east perhaps suffer the most from the illicit oil business. The Ilaje tribe of the Yoruba ethnic nationality which occupy this littoral territorial space exclusively are the greatest indigenous seafarers in the West and Middle Africa sub-regions. They are marine masters found in every creek and the Atlantic shoreline, hence priding themselves as agbe n’oko hengwa” (one whose beauty shows best sailing).

Their ancestral territory, now Ilaje Local Government of Ondo State played pioneer role in the oil industry, not only in Nigeria but the entire Gulf of Guinea. It was at the Ilaje village of Araromi that oil was first discovered in Nigeria in 1908 by the Nigerian Bitumen Corporation, a German Company which had to leave as a result of the first World War and for which the colonial British Government enacted the Oil Minerals Ordinance N0. 1 of 1914 ensuring British monopoly of the budding oil industry.

Further exploration in the eastern Niger Delta after the World War 2 through Shell which established its office at Owerri, led to the discovery in higher and commercial quantity at Oloibiri in 1956. Yet, the false narrative that oil was first discovered at Oloibiri persisted and dominated our curriculum until I felt compelled to put the records straight at the 2014 National Conference and other public fora since then.

Despite its pioneer status in the oil industry which gave impetus for more exploration in the entire Gulf of Guinea, the Ondo State oil producing area is the most traumatised and discriminated against. After several years of unrecorded oil production, it took the Babangida promulgation of Decree N0 23 of 1992 which effectively abolished the onshore/offshore dichotomy for the largely offshore producers of Ondo and Akwa Ibom to be recognised.

In spite of the recognition, oil wells on the Ondo State soil are still corruptly and deliberately given strange names and inappropriately credited to the neighbouring Delta State. Such is the scenario where in the current incident, NNPC Ltd, owner of all the well heads, appropriately identified the scene of the operation as an offshore location and a well jacket offshore Ondo State, Nigeria, with the unambiguous and exact coordinate of Latitude: 5.8197194477543235°, Longitude: 4.789002723991871°.

Soon thereafter, further reports linking far away Escravos with the location crept into the narratives while other reports ingeniously described the location of the oil thievery as a purported boundary of Escravos and Ondo State. It is all lies bordering on official corruption to create imaginary geographical contiguity between unrelated territories in order to ascribe loil well located in Ondo to Delta State.

It is this shenanigan that in spite of its quantum of production and the NDDC Act provision for rotation of the office of the Managing Director of the Commission, Ondo State is never to be considered for the position which has been illegally monopolised by Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa.

In the present Tantita operation, even Tompolo himself knows that his lieutenants who assisted him in the successful adventure were not only from Ondo State but also that only our boys can perform such feat in our own territorial waters. The Nigerian security system knows the good and bad ones among them. This thieving with its other environmental implications, happened in my backyard, it is multiple, complicated jeopardy to ascribe the land assets thereof to others.

Nigeria, we hail thee.