What can be said about the scale of crude oil theft in the country? It beggars belief. News of the discovery of a four-kilometre illegal pipeline in Forcados, Delta State, said to have been used to steal humongous quantities of oil for nine years undetected, sounded like fiction.
According to the Federal Government, Nigeria loses about 100,000 barrels of oil per day to thieves, and an estimated three million barrels every month. This is going by current statistics, the authorities said.
It is also estimated that more than $3.3bn (£2.9bn) has been lost to crude oil theft since last year. Crude oil is Nigeria’s main export, and the country is bleeding terribly from the effect of this scandalous stealing.
An unbelievable number of oil-theft points have been discovered since August when the government controversially awarded a pipeline surveillance contract worth N48bn per annum to a company linked to Government Ekpemupolo, popularly called Tompolo, to check the massive oil theft in the Niger Delta.
The former leader of the militant group, Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, was reported saying: “I think we have found over 58 points that have been tapped in both Delta and Bayelsa states.” It’s unimaginable how many more oil-theft points will be discovered as the operation continues.
No arrests have been made. This is not just intriguing; it is also alarming. The identities of the thieves who built these theft points and ran them have not been revealed. Are they unknown? Are they unknowable?
“Since it is a breach against the law, whether on pipelines or not, the law will certainly take its course. But it is not NNPC that will handle that aspect,” the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, Garba-Deen Muhammad, was reported saying.
He added: “The GCEO (Group Chief Executive Officer) said it on site when he visited the areas. He said when these people are found the law will take its course.”
Does this mean none of the criminals has been caught? If that is so, why is it so? Tompolo has said his firm is “only providing intelligence for the security people to assist to do the work.” The discovery of oil-theft spots should lead to the arrest of the thieves.
The authorities should not give the impression that the oil thieves are ghosts and the illegal facilities for oil theft were built by spirits. That can’t be true.