- Who wanted to steal Nigeria’s oil?
It was a theatre on the waterways, and a battle between otherwise legitimate organs – one official, the other paramilitary. Both of them claimed they were acting on behalf of the law when officers of the Nigerian Navy arrested four men.
The navy had a different perspective from the contracted security outfit called Tantita Securities Services Nigeria Limited, owned by Government Ekpemupolo. A naval patrol claimed to have arrested the four persons for stealing a boat at the FOB LEKKI waterways near Itolu community. The incident led to gunshots and made the residents raise an alarm. The four men were identified as Asonja Goddey (28), Obajimi Oluwaseyifunmi (38), Awoowo Aribo (35), and Oluwadaisi Balogun (40), all indigenes of Igbokoda in Ondo State. The owner of the boat they were trying to extort, Ishola Ojubuyi (42), was also taken into custody
According to the commander of NNS Beecroft, Commodore Kolawole Oguntuga, “Reviewing the information, naval patrol teams immediately launched a response operation. Upon arrival at the scene, the naval team met four individuals dressed in black polo shirts with TANTITA inscribed on the back, trying to recover a dismantled outboard engine from a local. The team recovered the engine and apprehended the four Tantita employees.”
He said the four men belonged to a movement of a large wooden boat with two fibre boats. He claimed that when the four noticed NN patrol teams, the boats changed course and fled. They abandoned the large wooden boat laden with 11x1000L Geepee tanks, with product suspected to be stolen crude oil.
But Tantita has a conflicting account rendered by its Ondo State coordinator, Idowu Osonja. The culprits, he alleged, were officers of the Nigerian Navy. Osonja said: “It is a pathetic and worrisome moment in the western corridor of the Niger Delta states as Nigerian Navy officers arrested four of Tantita security guards in Ondo/Ogun zone after the Tantita guards successfully apprehended a wooden vessel fully loaded with crude oil.”
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According to him, the Tantita security guards were monitoring the matter and later bombarded the vessel after discovering that the Navy officers were paid to guide the vessel. He lashed out at “this notorious act/display by the Navy officers (that) provoked the Tantita guards in the area to pursue the vessel, which they later succeeded in arresting.”
Osonja contended that: “To our greatest surprise, the owners of the vessel ran away and came back to the scene with some Nigerian Navy officers working at the Dangote Refinery, which resulted in a conflict and finally, the Navy officers attacked my men, later arrested four of the Tantita security guards from Ondo zone, and set free the wooden vessel.”
By their narratives, each side pointed an accusing finger at the other. Tension has always characterised the relationship between Tantita Security Services and the Nigerian Navy that has been accused of complicity with oil thieves on our waterways. Reports have been made about officers colluding with thieves of our patrimony, and such allegations hang as shadows over them.
Yet, the Navy does not stand convicted until the facts are exposed by an independent body. The Navy says it will investigate it, but it is not a detached body. Neither shall we take the words of Tantita as gospel truth. Many have questioned why a civilian outfit cornered a multi-billion contract to monitor our high seas but is now creating tension over alleged encounter with military officers suspected to have fallen into oil theft temptations. If confirmed to be true, it would be a monumental tragedy that Navy personnel conspire with looters of our oil.
We want the Federal Government to set up an independent inquiry to uncover the facts. It is high time, too, that some real culprits were prosecuted. Leaving the findings under the table could encourage repetition of such incidents. We do not know who, but it is certain someone was trying to steal Nigeria’s oil.
