NIGERIA’s oil wealth has been under siege in recent months, and the destroyers are well-connected (wo)men. They deplore oil theft by day but unleash oil stealers at night, robbing the nation blind. Naturally, the statistics of haemorrhage given by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) are scary: Nigeria loses on average $700 million per month to oil theft and vandalism at terminals. It cannot meet its Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) daily quota, and earnings from crude oil in the first quarter of 2022 fell to N790 billion, from N1.1 trillion between October and December 2021.
Naturally, concerned Nigerians, among them the Ijaw leader and First Republic Federal Commissioner for Information, Chief Edwin Clark, have been crying blue murder. Addressing a press conference in Abuja, Clark urged the Federal Government to institute a judicial commission to investigate oil theft. “Investigation into this matter must be full, open and comprehensive if there is sincerity to unravel what is going on,” he charged. Indeed, the oil and gas host communities in the Niger Delta have called on the Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the NNPCL, Mr. Melee Kyari, to stop oil theft and name and prosecute those behind the menace, or resign. Their grouse: the increasing oil theft has again thrown the country into a sorry state, reflecting a high corruption index.
Enter an unlikely hero, the ex-Niger Delta militant with an iconic name, Government Oweizide Ekpemupolo (Tompolo); ex-commander of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). President Muhammadu Buhari was not always favourably disposed to working with ex-militants. But with his outlook tempered by seven years of state failure on the creeks, he eventually buckled and saddled the ex-fighter pardoned by the Nigerian State with busting the gangs that steal Nigeria’s oil wealth and give the economy contractions and convulsions. And so Tompolo got a N40 billion contract for pipeline surveillance by the same government that in 2016 declared him wanted for alleged fraud. Of course there is Asari Dokubo, a former comrade in “the struggle for Niger Delta emancipation” and other warlords seeking a slice from Tompolo’s buttered bread but, on current evidence at least, they have not been able to arrest his onslaught on oil thieves on the polluted waters of the Niger Delta.
At the height of his power, Tompolo, the Okerenkoko, Gbaramatu prince from Delta State who shelved schooling for militancy in 1993, commanded thousands of militants, and was a major voice against the despoliation of the Niger Delta by multinational companies acting in collusion with Nigeria’s central government. He was declared wanted by the Nigerian State in 2009 but was able, along with many others, to secure an Amnesty deal with the Federal Government on June 27, 2009, riding on the waves of two key factors: the positive disposition of the then president, Umaru Yar’Adua to addressing Niger Delta agitations and the fact that a Niger Delta son, himself a peace advocate, was his (Yar’Adua’s) deputy. Goodluck Jonathan, who would later emerge president following Yar’Adua’s demise, actually once went into the Niger Delta jungles, alone and without arms of any sort, to preach peace to the daredevil, fire-breathing boys. Just like Buba Marwa, who handled the notorious Area Boys of Lagos with tact and diplomacy and caused them to exit the streets where they previously ruled, Yar’Adua caused the Niger Delta militants to exit the jungles and the creeks and enable oil business to continue, with the multinationals now tasked with executing real development projects in the lands they had wasted for years, and providing jobs and training for the boys, some of whom the government in fact took to foreign lands to get education and become ‘civilised’, tie-wearing citizens.
In finally letting ex-militants who previously blew up oil pipelines tackle oil theft, Buhari jettisoned the popular lie that modern states do not do deals with outlaws. The president probably remembers that Ronald Reagan’s first day in office was marked by the release of the US hostages held in Tehran, the result of two years of negotiations with Iran. Indeed, to facilitate the release of US hostages in Lebanon, his administration secretly sold arms to Iran despite a subsisting embargo. Bill Clinton’s 1995 meeting with Gerry Adams, leader of the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a group then designated by the US State Department as a terror outfit, was no secret. Clinton wanted to advance the Northern Ireland peace process and in fact granted Adams a US visa. European funding (via secret ransom payments) is a major factor in ISIS operations. If states do deals with terrorists, why not with pardoned militants?
The strategy seems to be working: operatives of Tompolo’s Tantita Security Services Limited (TSSL) recently ambushed eight members of a suspected crude oil syndicate while they were pumping crude oil from a Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL) pipeline in Delta State, into an improvised 87-metre long ocean-going vessel, MT Deino. The captain of the vessel, Temple Manasseh, and seven other suspects had pumped 605 cubic metres of crude oil into the vessel with 12 compartments from an illegal connection between Abiteye community and Escravos in Warri South Local Government Area. The vessel, previously arrested for oil bunkering in September 2021, had International Maritime Organisation (IMO) number 7210526 at the time it was apprehended in the Escravos River, and the TSSL operatives flatly rejected the outlaws’ offer of N25 million bribe to secure its release. The suspects are in custody at the 3 Battalion, Nigerian Army, Effurun. Captain Manasseh had sought to play the victim card saying: “I am not the one that loaded the vessel; seven boys hijacked me and loaded the vessel. I was in Escravos anchorage before they hijacked me and loaded crude.” But he was reportedly the captain of the same vessel when it was intercepted last year.
Tompolo and security officials have in fact uncovered more “tapping points” on the nation’s oil pipelines in Delta and Bayelsa states. The breakthrough reportedly came as the oil thieves threatened Tompolo and his men with severe consequences. But speaking with reporters at Oporoza, the headquarters of Gbaramatu kingdom, Tompolo dismissed the threat. And when the Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, and the NNPCL boss, Kyari, visited Delta State, he filled them in on the discovery of 16 tapping/stealing points on the trans-Forcados pipeline. Hear him: “We have discovered over 58 points tapping points that oil bunkerers have used in stealing crude oil from the nation’s pipelines in Delta and Bayelsa states, including the trans-Escravos and Trans-Ramos lines. We are doing the work together with the security agents; we are only providing intelligence to assist them in doing the work. Everybody, NNPCL, and security agencies, is working together in a very good spirit now. Now, the military has helped us to discover and stop the people from doing illegal activities, so we are going to work together… The stealing had been going on for eight to nine years..Our major problem is that the aquatic life of the people is gone and we are doing everything together with traditional rulers, security agencies, Department of State Services and all that to ensure that we reduce it to the barest minimum, so that our people can survive. Before this time, I had been discussing with oil bunkerers, whether from Rivers or Bayelsa. Many of them actually understand that oil bunkering is not a good thing for our environment.”
Tompolo, just like Iba Gani Adams, the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland who was once a notorious militant, may be an ex-agitator, but many would wonder if he actually was any more criminal than the rapists from distant lands who despoiled the Niger Delta landscape for decades, and the politicians who aided and abetted that rape, living a life of luxury while members of the host communities died in droves, plagued by environmental, economic, mental and emotional degradation. There are many who would swear that Sunday Igboho, until he took up Yoruba Nation agitation, was a notorious landgrabber. The point, then, is not about the past but about the present and the projected future. And if ex-Niger Delta militants can police oil assets so well, perhaps it is time to let the original owners enjoy at least 50 per cent of oil revenue.
Errata
An earlier version of this piece gave the wrong impression that oil-producing communities were to control oil assets at Independence in 1960. The error is regretted.
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