Crude Oil Theft: Again, Jonathan And His Familiar Mistakes
Posted: July 31, 2012 - 17:25
By Ifeanyi Izeze
It is actually laughable for people especially disgruntled political enemies of President Goodluck Jonathan to assume he is clueless about the mirage of malaise beseeching this country. His problem is that rather than confront issues with facts openly available to him, he tries to appease the very people he should be confronting. This was how he has managed the now cancerous problem of boko haram and now the shameful stealing of our crude. This thing would have been tackled effectively before now that the crime has become very sophisticated.


In what could be best described as outright insincerity, President Jonathan on Monday 23 July 2012 in a Jamboree-like confab cried out over the despicable act of crude oil stealing saying: “It is a very bad news and I believe that Nigerians and foreigners who indulge in the act need to throw their heads under the pillow because all over the world it is only in Nigeria that crude oil is stolen. We are not the only oil producing country; why is it that it is only in Nigeria that people steal crude oil? This must stop”.

What does the President actually mean? The same federal government few months ago ceded the huge maritime security contract to Global West Specialist Agency, a company belonging to an erstwhile warlord, Chief Government Ekpemukpolo, alias Tompolo with the mandate to protect/secure the nation’s coastal stretch especially the flank from Delta state down east. Is it not shameful that this crime goes on everyday even when we have the Navy, Marine Police, JTF, SSS and now, the Tompolo Arrangement? And why is the President not speaking to this group in a matter-of-fact manner?

The President does not need a carnival to call to order the perpetrators of this embarrassing crime of stealing crude oil from facilities in the Niger Delta. These people are well known to him and his security chiefs and he should not pretend about that. It is impossible and I mean impossible for anybody to come into the creeks of the Niger Delta or even near shore in the area to take crude oil to vessels berthed father away offshore if there are no “house rats guiding the bush rats to where madam keeps the fish.” Before the President Umaru Yar’adua’s amnesty programme for the Niger Delta militants came into effect, crude oil stealing and pipeline vandalisations were blamed on militants’ activities. When the amnesty came, the business dropped to near zero and this is the truth. But subsequently, there came a renewed interest in the crime and in a scope that is nothing compared to what obtained before the Yar’adua’s amnesty package. So the question is: what went wrong?

We have to tell ourselves the truth if we are really serious as a people. Recently, the media was inundated with stories and counter-stories over the supremacy tussle between the two major erstwhile public face of the repentant militants- Tompolo and Boyloaf. The problem was who should be rightly addressed as the leader of the Niger Delta militants: a title which Tompolo currently enjoys to the distaste of Boyloaf. Do we need further explanation? Meanwhile, Tompolo was supposed to be providing security and/or intelligence on bunkering activities and tampering of crude oil activities in the coastal areas.

The same thing happened when the President as the commander- in -chief failed at the onset to look eye-ball to eye- ball with the known perpetrators and sponsors of boko haram to extract conformity to the rules of peaceful engagement. Now splinter groups are emerging everyday in the ranks of the book haram and it has become very difficult to even pin down any particular group. This could have been averted.

The U.S. diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks had earlier warned that “no other major oil-producing country loses as much revenue from illicit oil bunkering as Nigeria, largely because the political elite and militants (oil thieves) profit from such operations.”
Do we need a leaked U.S cable to know or rather tell ourselves the truth that illegal bunkering in Nigeria, represents significant economic activity with serious ramifications for the nation’s economy, security, and even our democracy not to mention its adverse, most times irreversible, impacts on the environment?

Who are these people (illegal bunkerers) and who are they working for? Every tanker, boat or barge is well registered somewhere either in Nigeria or any other country. So who owns these vehicles and the village-sized oil receptor marine vessels/tankers that receive Nigeria’s stolen crude oil farther offshore from our coastlines? Does it mean the security agencies don’t interrogate those arrested if for nothing, to gather intelligence to help unravel the real culprits behind this illicit business? Let nobody make mistakes about this: crude oil stealing in Nigeria is not by miscreants in the Niger Delta. Powerful Hausa/Fulanis; Igbos, Yorubas etc are all involved and outsiders of the Niger Delta may even be more involved than the Niger Delta people.

According to media reports quoting oil operators in the country, about 1 million metric tones of crude oil was stolen in the first half of this year alone. Let’s do some calculations: One metric tonne of crude oil (Bonny Light) contains on the average about 7.2 barrels of oil, so one million metric tonnes would amount to 7.2 million barrels of crude oil. Then at $120 per barrel conservative average for the spot market price, this volume would yield about $864 million in the first half of this year alone for the oil thieves. And you still say this is a village or Niger Delta militants’ thing. Haba!

As reported in the media, the Minister of Transport, Senator Abdullahi Idris Umar, in a BBC Hausa service interview said although the Federal Government has always declared that the security of Nigeria’s coastline is ultimately the prerogative of her Navy, Global West Specialist Agency will also consult for the government in securing the Nigerian coastline.

“We did not say that the company will take over responsibility of the Nigerian Navy, the company’s job is to just buy the vessels and other components needed in securing the coastline. And the partnership reached has nothing to do with them taking over functions of the navy.

“There is nothing like navy has failed; the issue is not that. The partnership is legal but not taking official functions of the navy. If we guard this coastline it will boost our revenue, and the reforms meeting we are doing is to bring change.”

So if this be, between Tompolo and the Navy, President Jonathan should compel them to tell us why this national embarrassment has continued unabated and even escalating. This is the option the president should take to avert the Niger Delta returning to the spate of arms confrontation that prevailed in the creeks before the amnesty programme of the federal government. And the President should do this quickly.

Gbawe: GEJ is simply destroying the SS in precisely the same way his mentor OBJ attempted to divide-and-conquer the SW. This man gained a golden opportunity to uplift a region that has suffered terrible injustice into meritocratic [/b]prominence and set the ND/SS on the path of sustainable development.

Development for the ND can be facilitated through a deliberate drive to promote the coming together of the best and most upright intellect the region has to offer in an effort to chart a way forward. instead GEJ is[b] cynically empowering criminality, oil theft, militancy, political impositions etc that will become another Odili-style albatross against his region in future. I wish the ND/SS 'goodluck'.

VoodooDoll:

It's a pity. I had a lot of goodwill for GEJ's right to run at the start, despite the stories and miserable track record. I really wanted him to shame the OBJs and IBBs of this world. I would have happily eaten my hat in shame if he had proved us all wrong. But all we hear these days are: "parasites, 2015, tenure elongation, na we oil". All these while resources are reaped by rent seeking politicians, taxes collected but wasted and our collective common wealth stolen whilst leaving us all with new debts ($44bn at last count).

The burden of GEJ's legacy will be borne by all, but the regionalistic and tribalistic sycophants will not be forgotten so soon.

Before the President Umaru Yar’adua’s amnesty programme for the Niger Delta militants came into effect, crude oil stealing and pipeline vandalisations were blamed on militants’ activities. When the amnesty came, the business dropped to near zero and this is the truth. But subsequently, there came a renewed interest in the crime and in a scope that is nothing compared to what obtained before the Yar’adua’s amnesty package.