Tompolo’s exploits

From being hunted by security agents few years ago, Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, is today the hottest act in Nigeria’s crackdown against oil thieves and, in effect, the country’s economic survival. By reason of the Federal Government’s enlistment of a security surveillance firm to which he is linked, the ex-militant is the new czar of the war to tackle down a menace that is bringing the country close to her knees. And the country appears benefitting from the deal.

Within eight weeks of being signed up by government in a multi-billion naira contract involving oil pipeline surveillance in the Niger Delta region, Tompolo’s Tantita Security Services Limited has uncovered a slew of illegal oil tapping points in Delta and Bayelsa states through which crude oil is being stolen by economic leeches. The former leader of militant Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) lately confirmed that the crackdown also unearthed a four-kilometre long illegal oil pipeline in the Forcados area of Delta State. Government, in August, awarded the pipeline surveillance contract reportedly worth N48billion per year – @N4billion per month – to Tantita Security Services with the aim of stemming massive oil theft in the Niger Delta. The contract had elicited intense public criticism of government’s decision to engage a non-state actor for such critical operation. But Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) Chief Executive Officer Mele Kyari, in justifying the contract, argued that it wasn’t the first time private operators were being engaged to fight the menace of oil stealing in the creeks. And he was right. Former President Goodluck Jonathan farmed out pipeline security contracts to non-state actors including non-Niger Delta based groups like the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) during his tenure, which was widely perceived as a ploy to harvest support for his re-election bid of 2015 that eventually fell through. In the present case concerning government’s patronage of Tompolo, who previously championed Niger Delta insurgency against the Nigerian state and thereby became a security quarry, Kyari had said government was not dealing directly with him but with a private security firm in which he has stake. Whatever, Tompolo is now a contractor playing in government’s behalf on the same terrain where he had once played in conflict with government: same turf but substituted loyalty. 

Since they came on board, operatives of Tantita Security Services have reported the discovery of major tapping points on the Trans-Forcados/Ramos Pipeline in Delta State through which oil thieves suspected to include International Oil Companies (IOCs), security officials, freelance bunkerers and locals had colluded over the years to bleed this country pale. Among others, surveillance operations by the firm unearthed no fewer than 16 breaches on a pipeline operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) at Yokri community and its environs in Delta State. The pipeline in question runs from Otumara and ends at Forcados Terminal; with locals, oil companies and security personnel as well reportedly found to have been siphoning crude oil from the line over the years. Tantita said it had reported its findings to military authorities and the NNPCL management, which was the ostensible reason Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Lucky Irabor and NNPCL’s Mele Kyari flew in from Abuja a couple of weeks back to get first-hand view of the several breaches. Speaking to journalists after inspecting the breaches, General Irabor vowed that Defence authorities would spare no effort to fish out the culprits. For his part, Kyari noted that the illegal attachments to Trans-Forcados/Ramos pipeline were “professionally done.” On next line of action, he stated: “The CDS has said clearly that he would investigate and anyone involved in this racket, whether from community members, community contractors, government security agencies, workers of the oil companies including NNPCL and Shell will be dealt with.” 

The operations of Tompolo’s security firm have also blown the cover off an illegal loading port attached to the Trans Escravos pipeline at Yokri flow station in the Ogulagha oil field in Burutu council area of Delta. So also did Tantita operatives penultimate week intercept a 1,500 metric ton-capacity oil vessel with eight crew members loaded with stolen crude on Escravos river in Warri Southwest council area of Delta State. Between 600 to 650 cubic metres of illegally lifted crude were said to be on board the vessel at the time of its apprehension. Existing records reportedly showed that the vessel has been in use over many years to lift stolen crude to Tema port in Ghana; it was indeed apprehended for oil bunkering in September 2021 but got released in curious circumstances before the latest re-arrest.

“Oil theft: the challenge until now is just not lack of containment capacity but insufficient will in government to fight the menace.”

During an interactive session with Senate’s joint committee on the petroleum sector penultimate week, Kyari again bemoaned the resource haemorrhage constituted by oil stealing and confirmed breakthroughs in the new security crackdown. “As a result of oil theft, Nigeria loses about 600,000 barrels per day, which is not healthy for the nation’s economy and in particular the legal operators in the field, which had led to closedown of some of their operational facilities. But in rising up to the highly disturbing challenge, NNPCL has in recent time in collaboration with relevant security agencies clamped down on the economic saboteurs,” he said. Kyari highlighted the successes recorded as follows: “In the course of the clampdown within the last six weeks, 395 illegal refineries have been deactivated, 274 reservoirs destroyed, 1,561 metal tanks destroyed, 49 trucks seized, and the most striking of all is the four-kilometer illegal oil connection line from Forcados Terminal into the sea which had been in operation undetected for nine solid years.” In stating the magnitude of the challenge, he said aerial surveillance of affected areas revealed the economic saboteurs carrying on their activities “unchallenged and unperturbed.” He added that the problem at hand was “not only (about) security but also social, as locals in most areas where the illegal refiners operate unknowingly serve as their employees by mistaking them for operatives of licensed companies.”

Before Tompolo’s firm came into the play, oil stealing had gone on in the Niger Delta with government seemingly helpless. Actually, Kyari at the Senate joint committee session acknowledged that oil theft has been ongoing in the country for over 22 years, “but the dimension and the rate it assumed in recent time is unprecedented.” Truth, however, is that the challenge until now is not just lack of containment capacity but insufficient will in government to fight the menace. It was like there was an assumption Nigeria could live with it, until existential economic difficulties of recent years proved otherwise. Some members of security agencies of government who should have led the charge against oil thieves have always been suspected of being among the leeches. And not that it is an idle suspicion. Last January, Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike accused a police chief in the state of operating an illegal refinery and demanded his immediate redeployment. “He must leave this state. I can’t be governor here and the security man owns an illegal refinery. No, it’s not possible. Take him to wherever they allow bunkering,” Wike had said. Meanwhile, government is yet to bring indicted actors among the security personnel to book. This has fuelled insinuation that there is state complicity in the racket, and it is government’s onus to prove this insinuation wrong if it is wrong.

Besides Tantita, there are said to be two other private security firms engaged by NNPCL. And if what Tompolo’s firm is reported to be getting offers any guide, we could well do the math as to what the arrangement costs this country. But, of course, the cost is negligible compared to what is being lost to oil thieves. Still, the game changer does not lie in the hands of the private security contractors. Government must walk its talk about bringing oil thieves and their colluders to justice, whether they be from the security services, the government’s bureaucracy or indeed officials of the oil companies. Besides, the edge that Tompolo brings to the task apparently is that he is hunting oil thieves on a turf familiar to him – more than to state security agents who would only be on ad hoc posting on unfamiliar terrain. The modest successes recorded again proves the sense in the advocacy for state police.