- Tells Tinubu to Go After Them
By Abiola Olawale
The Pan Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) being led by Second Republic Senator representing Warri and erstwhile Federal Minister of Information during the Gowanian military regime, Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, best known as E.K. Clark has raised alarm regarding some “big players” in both the public and private sector who have allegedly orchestrated sustained ways of stealing the nation’s crude oil undetected.
The PANDEF led by E.K. Clark, who is also the national leader of the Ijaw nation and a former Commissioner for Education in the old Midwest Region( now Delta and Edo states) further alleged that certain political officials are using their political powers to steal crude oil and in turn allegedly sell to their friends in the international community.
The E.K.Clark led group, which is also a mouthpiece of some leaders of thought in the Niger Delta, said those individuals have made it difficult for successive governments to eradicate the massive loss of revenue accruable from crude oil sales or production.
The spokesman of PANDEF, Hon. Ken Robinson who spoke with the press on Saturday revealed that the “big players” behind crude oil theft reside in Abuja, Lagos, and other world cities, adding that these big oil thieves enjoy protection from those in public sector or government circles.
According to him, these individuals have partnerships with International Oil Companies, (IOCs) He said: “This is the position that PANDEF has repeated severally. We have re-echoed it that highly placed Nigerians, elements in the military, and officials in the oil industry in collaboration with international syndicates were perpetrating the oil theft in the Niger Delta. What is involved in the process of crude oil theft is demanding for the ordinary Niger Delta people. What our young people do in terms of these local refining of crude is bucket thief.
“They are bucket thieves. It is insignificant compared with what these people, who do not want Nigeria to prosper, and the Niger Delta people to benefit from their God-given resources, take out of the country. There are international connections with people highly- placed in this country. The former governor of Bayelsa State is right when he said these people reside in Lagos, Abuja and other world capitals. They also live in other parts of Northern, Southern and Eastern Nigeria and across the country. They are not people of the Niger Delta.”
He added: “They have reduced the Niger Delta to a state of struggle. Niger Delta people are struggling for survival while billions of dollars are being stolen from their land. Their environment is being devastated and our young people are resorting to criminality, which ordinarily is not part of us. It is the level of people involved that has made it difficult for the government to stop it.
“For instance, there are interests in the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL). The oil theft is not just about those who siphon, there is also official theft. There is even under declaration of what is taken out of the country, because as we speak, with the level of technology, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria should be in his office and have a system before him, indicating the amount of crude produced daily. He does not need someone in the NNPCL towers to tell him the daily produce. He should be seeing it. If it is loaded, there should be a tracking system. Those things are not being employed because even officials are under-declaring what they make. Individuals make billions of dollars out of Niger Delta oil.”
It would be recalled that the issue of crude oil theft has been a matter of recurring concern to successive governments in Nigeria. However, it has been difficult to permanently halt the menace which has been of great negative effects to the volume of crude oil production in Nigeria.
