Oil theft and Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda

There is no doubt that one of the major obstacles to the implementation of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda and similar promises by governors, expected to turn around Nigeria’s current pitiable fortune for good is the continued massive plundering of the exhaustible resource, crude oil, which the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society (NMGS) estimates has attained the status of a ‘Frankenstein monster’ such that the quantum stolen now outstrips what is left to be sold legitimately.

Unfortunately, prior to the latest alarm, which we consider a big threat to the continued economic survival of the country, the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has conservatively put the loss to oil thieves at over ‘619.7 million barrels of crude oil valued at N16.25 trillion ($46.16 billion) to crude oil theft between 2009 and 2020’ which further reveals the grave danger posed by these powerful criminals and a serious indictment of our Armed Forces personnel who are statutorily charged with protecting the nation’s territorial integrity over the years.

Importantly, the larger implication of the theft if unchecked, is that Nigeria and the incumbent administrations like the case in the past, will continue to lose its enormous resource and therefore unable to achieve budgetary projected revenue at the federal, state and local government levels and find it almost impossible to implement various development programmes aimed at bettering the lot of citizens given the current humongous public debt profile coupled with the scandalous reality that the federal government spent over 90 percent of its revenue on debt servicing during the first quarter of this year.

Specifically, the Debt Management Office, DMO recently revealed that between January and March 2023, Nigeria spent N874.13billion on domestic debt service and $801.36million (N368.87bn) on external debt servicing giving a total of N1.24trn using an exchange rate of $1=N460.3. In other words, the country is in a precarious situation to  incur fresh loans from international finance companies for development purposes considering her excruciating debt stock.

It is however regrettable that many believe that top security officers, senior government officials, powerful businessmen with international accomplices, oil industry operators and host community stakeholders are neck deep in the daily plundering of our commonwealth which partly explains why the large scale crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism had defied any permanent solution over the decades.

We note with concern that although the Tinubu administration is yet to publicly respond to recent serious allegation by a Niger Delta activist, Asari Dokubo that some personnel of the Nigerian Army and Navy were responsible for the massive oil theft in the Niger Delta region, the indictment corroborates a long-held notion by many citizens that there is a clandestine collusion between the oil thieves and security forces charged with protecting the nation’s territorial waters.

Without mincing words and daring the consequences, the former militant leader declared: “The Army and Navy are behind oil theft. They intimidate civil defence personnel, who are by law expected to protect installations. They tap directly from the oil head. What has been happening in the last eight years is unprecedented anywhere in the world,” stressing  that officers and men of the Army and Navy deployed to protect oil installations instead of performing their duties “set up facilities they call local refineries”.

Not done yet, the apparently angry activist further alleged: “This is a crime against humanity. The livelihood of the people is being destroyed. The main culprits are the Army and Navy. There are notorious army commanders who are known to be the ones behind oil bunkering”, while addressing State House Correspondents after meeting President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, Abuja recently. Swiftly reacting, the accused security agencies challenged Dokubo to unmask the masterminds of the highly lucrative crime which in our view is a tall order for obvious reasons.

But the truth of the matter is that officers and men of Nigerian Armed Forces deployed in the region can’t fully exonerate themselves from complicity in this decades-long heinous crime against the people whereby over 400,000 barrels of crude oil are lost daily to criminals by a nation not at war with any external aggressor and rated as having the best Navy in Africa. So the pertinent question is: why has it been impossible to eradicate this crime even when the immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, a retired army general, who doubled as Minister of Petroleum Resources and then Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces for eight years?

Similarly, it is a truism that despite the multi-billion Naira pipeline surveillance contract between ex-militant warlord, Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to fight pipelines vandals and illegal oil bunkering, crude oil theft remains a national challenge that requires urgent attention. According to experts, the federal government can save as much as N6.27 trillion yearly if it curbs oil theft in the country which further underscored  the gravity of the problem and the urgent need to proffer immediate lasting solution.

Indeed, Nigeria, for years under Buhari, failed to meet her Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC production quotas due to massive oil theft and other production challenges while oil revenue underperformed as a result of significant production shortfalls such as shut-ins emanating from pipeline vandalism and crude oil theft and subsequent low accruals to the Federation Account and states inability to pay salaries and pensions.

Consequently, we charge President Tinubu not to leave any stone unturned in adopting radical and innovative approach to deal with these saboteurs as a matter of national emergency and as part of short term strategies for economic recovery. Therefore, the recent sack of the Service Chiefs, their replacements by the president as well as ongoing redeployment of top commanders across the armed forces is a step in the right direction as it will certainly go a long way to overhauling the nation’s security architecture.

We further recommend that all military personnel saddled with protecting oil and gas installations in the entire Niger Delta before now should be redeployed outside the region and be immediately replaced with new officers and men whose watch word should be zero tolerance to crude oil theft in addition with fresh insurance and welfare packages for affected personnel.

As a further step, the President should set up a high powered judicial commission of inquiry to  investigate allegation of oil bunkering by some notorious naval commanders and others leveled by Dokubo with a view to bringing them to justice and reduced to the barest minimum pipeline vandalism, oil theft and illegal bunkering in the region.

Besides, in our view, an emergency meeting of all stakeholders in the South South geo-political zone comprising traditional rulers, youth and women groups, activists, government officials and other operatives in the nation’s oil and gas sector should be convened urgently as part of the overall strategy to curtail current massive stealing, save  the region from further environmental hazards and the common good of the country.

It is against this backdrop that we find merit and strongly support recent recommendation by the new president of the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society, Akinade Olatunji that a holistic approach be quickly adopted in curbing the monster which amongst others include the need for host communities particularly their leaders and youths to imbibe a sense of ownership of the oil assets in their respective domains as against present approach of giving tokens to them despite the humongous resources being siphoned from their lands which to a large extent does not engender patriotism and a sense of belonging.

“The Oil producing communities in Nigeria are overdue for a sort of marshal plan that will transform them from the ghetto setting to the glamorous setting they have seen in cities built with money from their resources. The amount of resources allocated to oil communities in the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) is not sufficient to guarantee the kind of safety on investment that is required for the continuous survival and profitability of the oil and gas sector in the long run. This is an aspect of the PIA that needs to be urgently amended otherwise the entire prospects expected of the Act may be jeopardised”, he declared.

In other words the Presidency in conjunction with the 10^th National Assembly should muster the political will not only to make the PIA 2021 work and necessary amendment effected but for the host communities to see themselves as having a greater stake and the ultimate owners of oil and gas installations in the region to inject fresh vigour, energy and enthusiasm into the sector as opposed to the people’s current non-challant attitude to the multi-billion dollars investment.

It is therefore obvious to all that most of the campaign promises made by the president and governors including Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda will not be fulfilled if concrete measures are not urgently put in place early enough in their four-year tenure to combat oil theft ferociously in order to boost production output and generate the much needed revenue for the implementation of government’s development projects for the wellbeing of the citizens.