An intercepted vessel carrying barrels of stolen crude oil was set ablaze by security personnel of the Joint Task Force, Operation Delta Safe, working with Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited in the Escravos region of Delta State.
A military chopper burned the ship on fire.
The ship, which was purportedly owned by a Nigerian-registered business, was traveling to Cameroon with the cargo when the captain and crew were detained on board.
Captain Warred Enisuoh, Executive Director of Operations and Technical at Tantita Security, and Rear Admiral Olusegun Ferreira, Commander of the Joint Task Force, Operation Delta Safe, claim that the oil cargo was illegally obtained from an offshore well-jacketed vessel in Ondo State at the time of the arrest and did not have any legal documentation.
The aforementioned ship had spent the previous 12 years operating covertly.
The Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited, a security company hired by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and owned by former militant leader Government Ekpemepulo alias Tompolo, has made a number of troubling discoveries in recent months.
Never-ending Disputation
Security personnel also demolished a crude oil theft vessel in October 2022 off the Niger Delta creeks after Tompolo’s company allegedly detained it.
Some Nigerians were incensed by the security officers’ decision to destroy the vessel and said it should have been retained as evidence to use in the owners of the vessel’s prosecution.
Subsequently, the House of Representatives declared that it will look into the circumstances surrounding the security agents’ demolition of the oil bunkering vessel.
The Federal Government defended the quick demise of the ship, asserting that it was in accordance with the terms of contract.
General Lucky Irabor, who was then the chief of the defense staff, said that the vessel was caught in the act and that security personnel immediately set the “instrument of operation” on fire, emphasizing that no inquiry is required to carry out the measure.
An aggressive cancer?
With unfathomable amounts of oil being stolen by select cabals in the oil industry for years, oil theft has turned into a deadly cancer in Nigeria.
The NNPC claimed last year that it had discovered an illicit oil connection from the Forcados Terminal that had functioned for nine years and lost around 600,000 barrels of oil per day during that time.
In a similar vein, Tompolo reported that since the operation to stop oil theft on the waterways of Delta and Bayelsa states began, roughly 58 illegal oil points have been detected.
Nasir El-Rufai, a former governor of Kaduna State, claimed that the federal government should leave the oil and gas industry because it has failed.
El-Rufai also demanded that the NNPC be privatized, claiming the organization has been declaring profits without paying dividends.
The former governor claimed that anything managed by the government always fails and pointed out that industries like entertainment, telecom, fintech, and others that are successful in the nation operate independently of the government.
