In the past few months, the Federal
Government, which had lived in denial
of the actual reason for the razor-
sharp increase in oil bunkering,
popularly known as kpofire, in the
Niger Delta, had upped its game in the
surveillance of oil pipelines with the
engagement of private pipeline
surveillance contractors.
One contractor is Tantita Security
Services Limited, TSSL, owned by the
leader of the moribund Movement for
the Emancipation of the Niger Delta,
MEND) and high chief of Ijaw ethnic
nationality, Government Ekpemupolo,
alias Tompolo.
Misleading intelligence
Before now, the security report was
that some militants and other
misguided miscreants, harboured by
villagers in the different riverine
communities in the oil-rich region,
were the monsters breaking into the
nation’s pipelines and haemorrhaging
the country.
The intelligence report acknowledged
that they were major oil thieves
bankrolling the operations of the
minor oil thieves; it was unspecific in
their nomenclature.
Based on the disingenuous details, the
government has pursued a one-track
strategy of a crackdown on suspected
operators of illegal oil refining camps
in the creeks of the Niger Delta,
destruction of the said camps,
equipment, and apprehension of some
operators. However, the real damage
continued because the major culprits
remained unruffled.
