President Goodluck Jonathan recently announced that the Federal Government had set aside the princely sum of $1 billion to tackle the protracted crisis of crude oil theft, pipeline vandalism and the so-called illegal bunkering that have resulted in the loss of between 10 and 20 percent of the nation’s crude oil production output. The President, who spoke while on a visit to The Netherlands, headquarters of Shell, Nigeria’s biggest partners in the oil and gas industry, which has been worst hit by the seemingly insurmountable security challenges confronting the industry, said the funds would also be committed to apprehension and prosecution of oil thieves.
Details of the programme include further action to enhance the security of pipelines and other oil industry infrastructure, resolve community-related issues, boost youth empowerment in oil-producing areas, and enhance the commitment of oil companies to the discharge of their corporate social responsibilities. The President said that the fresh onslaught against oil theft planned by his administration would require the maximum co-operation of the international community, especially countries like The Netherlands, which are major stakeholders in the global oil industry.
Without doubt, any effort to contain oil theft, which has had far reaching implications for the economic well-being of the nation, should be welcome. But as it stands, the government itself has not shown that it is ready to confront the issue at hand, leading to fears that the money being budgeted now could amount to a waste. For one, the nation is not apprised of the strategic enforcement framework of the new offensive. In specifics, Nigerians should be told how the planned offensive will be different from the old one.
Oil theft has been going on for ages, but the growth of militancy in the Niger-Delta region under the cover of resource control agitation, had exposed the economic underbelly of the nation in the form of poorly protected pipeline networks that have become the target of all sort of marauding gangs. Even, the Presidential Amnesty Programme aimed at pulling militants from the creeks and restoring sanity and security to oil and gas operations, has failed to stem the steady flow of oil to illegal markets.
Indeed, this phenomenon has since assumed an industrial scale such that $1 billion is lost every month to crude oil theft, according to the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Hundreds of troops sent to police the creeks have had little or no effect on checking this activity. For many of them, the game has now become that of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.
What Nigerians cannot understand is how the Federal Government could have folded its arms while the nation’s most strategic sector has remained under sustained assaults for so long with many negative consequences, including declining oil revenues, which has threatened the ability of governments at all levels to honour obligations, including payment of workers’ salaries; inability to deliver gas to power stations and associated blackouts that accompanies it; poor accountability as leakages allow for all sort of manipulations in the system, and exposing the military to all sort of temptations such that oil thieves now have the temerity to walk up to military commanders and offer bribes in exchange for gunboats to escort cargoes of stolen crude.
Given government’s failure to tackle a problem that would have been resolved by empowering the navy with the right platforms and other resources to secure our waters and coastlines so they can easily arrest and confiscate ships that come in to take out stolen crude with stiff punishment meted out to the crew and collaborators, it is difficult to see what the ‘technical committee’ that will spend the $1 billion can achieve.
What is clear is that those responsible for the industrial scale theft of Nigeria’s crude oil are not the ordinary Nigerians trying to eke out a living, albeit illegally, by stealing a few drum of oil to ‘refine’ in the bush, but those with the means, resources and connections to run a parallel oil industry as it were in the Niger Delta region. This parallel oil industry is where the government, if it is truly serious, should concentrate its efforts to fish out these economic saboteurs and bring them to book.
The danger signals are daily being beamed, and they remain portentous. The slow but steady exit of oil companies from Nigeria as a result of these strange circumstances they find themselves only underlines the imperative of working quickly to end this national nightmare.
National Mirror
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