WikiLeaks names Atiku, late Yar’Adua as top oil thefts .
Tuesday, 12 April 2011 00:00 Segun Adeleye Hits: 207 . . .Share 0The controversial Internet whistle blower made another shock disclosure about Nigeria yesterday.

It said politicians and military leaders, rather than the militants are responsible for the majority of oil thefts in Nigeria’s crude-rich Niger Delta, while the late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, the elder brother of former President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar were listed as being the biggest forces behind the thefts.

Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Limited, a subsidiary of Shell Companies in Nigeria as far back as 2009 disclosed that Nigeria lost about $1.5 billion yearly to crude oil theft.

WikiLeaks said yesterday that a U.S. diplomatic cable quoting a Nigerian official showed that a member of a government panel on troubles in nation’s Niger Delta implicated Yar’Adua and Atiku as being the biggest forces behind the thefts.

It claimed that those thefts also fuel arms sales to the restive region while causing environmental damage and cutting production in a nation crucial to U.S. oil supplies.

“It is in the interests of these people to make it appear that the Niger Delta problem is intractable,” the Jan. 2009 cable quotes panel member Tony Uranta as saying.

“As a result, they prop up the militants, including some who have an ideological basis for their actions.”

The diplomatic cable quotes Uranta as blaming “no more than 15 per cent” of oil thefts on militants operating in the delta.



Instead, politicians, retired admirals and generals and others in the country’s elite profit from the thefts. Typically, thieves solder or cut into oil pipelines running through the mangrove swamps of the delta. Some refine the crude into kerosene or diesel in crude refineries, while other oil sails out to foreign ports for sale.

“Uranta claimed that the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, the president’s brother, had been the ‘biggest’ bunkerer,” the cable reads, using the local term for oil thieves.

“When he died, his holdings were taken over by his brothers but managed on their behalf by his close personal friend, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.”

The large-scale theft, compounded by anger over unceasing poverty and pollution in the delta despite 50 years of oil production, led to an uprising of militants in the region beginning in 2006. Military-grade weapons funneled into the region, turning gunrunners into militant leaders who espoused political ideas — but kept their eyes on the profits from stolen oil.

While much of the violence calmed after a 2009 government-sponsored amnesty program, oil thefts continue unabated in the region. Uranta also blamed retired military leaders for taking part in both oil theft and the arms trade. A February 2009 cable quoting Dimieri von Kemedi, a youth leader in the delta, also blames soldiers on the ground in the region.

“The military wants to remain in the Niger Delta because they profit enormously from money charged for escorting illegally bunkered crude and from money extorted in the name of providing security on the roads,” the cable reads. “The , foot soldiers are not the only ones who profit; the commissioner of police, the director of the State Security Service (and) the military all line up at the governor’s door asking for ‘favours,’ Kemedi said.”

The cables also suggested militants received foreign military training and that the Israeli military equipped and trained some government soldiers.

Atiku, a top politician was in the race to become the presidential candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in this year’s election, but lost to President Goodluck Jonathan in the primaries.

He denied the allegations yesterday.

According to a statement issued to The Associated Press: “Atiku said this is a recycled old tale told again and again by business rivals unable to match the business success.

“Atiku is unaware of any links that the late General Yar’Adua had with bunkering and he believed absolutely that this is false accusation.”

Yar’Adua, who served as second-in-command of the country’s military government in the late 1970s, died in prison in 1997 where he was detained by General Sani Abacha.

Mutiu Sunmonu, the Managing Director of SPDC said in 2009 while speaking at the CWC- organised Nigeria Oil and Gas conference and exhibition in Abuja that: “Even with low oil prices, the (Nigerian) government loses between $1 billion and $1.5 billion every year to crude theft,” Sunmonu told delegates to the conference in Abuja.

“Crude theft is a crime, we should not give excuse to people stealing crude in the name of resource control or agitations.”

Thieves masquerading under the guise of agitating for improved living conditions for communities in the oil-rich Niger-Delta, drill holes into oil manifolds and pipelines that crisscross the region, to siphon crude which is then loaded into barges transferred into ocean tankers on the high seas.

Sunmonu said that the act had reached a point where the lives of oil workers as well as the people in the Niger-Delta, are in danger.

He said the Nigerian government must begin to enforce law and order in the troubled region, as this would also ensure a conducive atmosphere to fast track development in the region.

Also speaking on the crisis in the region, NNPC spokesman, Levi Ajuonuma, said oil loadings at Nigeria’s terminals have come under threat by the activities of oil thieves.

“It is becoming impossible to load crude oil at the terminals…tankers are now attacked at will,” Ajuonuma told attendees at the conference.

“Nigeria is bleeding and the industry is losing heavily to crude oil theft,” he said.

“Foreign companies in oil and gas as well as construction sectors are threatening to pull out because of the criminality in the region.”