By Chukwuma Umeorah
Chairman, Bayelsa Traditional Rulers Council, Bubaraye Dakolo has challenged the Federal Government to go after those culpable in crude oil theft in the country, irrespective of their societal status.
The monarch, while speaking in a television interview yesterday, also pointed out the involvement of top government and security officials as the major reason for the alarming rate of oil theft in the country.
“The Nigerian authorities at different levels know the thieves. Some of them are part of the thieves. That is why no one wants to bring them to book, that is why they are not in jail.
“The real thieves are the subsidy racketeers and those big names who have been milking the system for several decades without anyone going in for it. I can bet you, those in authority know who they are. The oil thieves are big men, big enough, international governments are involved, NNPCL and many more are involved,” he fumed.
The reason they prefer to present the face of a young uneducated and unemployed person from the Niger-Delta as a thief is to distract the world. The reason is obvious, they do not want to get to those who are behind these nefarious acts.
Speaking to the recent impoundment of a vessel bearing 800,000 litres of stolen crude by Tantita Security Service, he expressed concern as to how a vessel of the size of the MT Tura was able to be loaded with stolen crude and left the territorial waters without being noticed despite assurance from several security agencies saddled with the surveillance of our waterways and from similar occurrences in the past.
“It takes a while to load the whole of that volume, and so, it was definitely loaded in an authorised loading bay. This means that the authorities of NNPC were supposed to know, and I think they know. And usually in all those loading terminals, there are law enforcement agencies; so, definitely, all of these agencies knew that these were taking place.”
While commending Tantita for the seizure of the vessel, Dakolo suggested to the government and all security outfits that rather than just going after the ‘foot soldiers’ stealing the oil in the creeks, the government should be more concerned by their sponsors whom he claimed some were in upper echelons of the society.
Dakolo maintained that if there was a strong political will and sincerity of purpose on the part of the authorities, the issue of oil theft would be dealt with in a matter of weeks. He urged the president and all those in power to the needful, to end the drama of crude oil theft in the country and ameliorate the sufferings of Nigerians.