In late August 2023, the Nigerian Navy informed the public that its men thwarted an attempt by some elements to undermine oil pipelines, somewhere off the coast of Lagos.
The criminal intent of the vandals, according to the Navy, was to steal oil – a subversive economic activity that has evolved into a profitable enterprise within Nigeria’s oil industry. The Navy said it arrested four individuals, who were at the point of recovering an outboard engine from some persons of interest in the locality where the incident occurred. As it turned out, the four persons apprehended by the Navy, were in the uniform of Tantita Security Services.
Tantita Securities Services Nigeria Limited (TSSNL), for proper appreciation, is a private security firm, incorporated in 2005, essentially to provide protection for private and public property. The firm pitches its capacity to secure Nigeria’s vital oil and gas assets, both onshore and offshore. Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited is owned by Chief Government Ekpemupolo, better known as Tompolo, one of the foremost militant leaders in the warlordism regime that prevailed in the oil belt of Niger Delta, not too long ago.
While it is true that Tompolo is presently bedecked in corporate garbs, providing legally approved security services through Tantita, in a structured ambience, his latent capacity to affect the flow, or otherwise, of crude oil, in the creeks of Niger Delta, is not in doubt.
The decision by the Muhammadu Buhari presidency to engage Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited to provide surveillance for oil pipeline and allied oil-related assets in the Niger Delta was, without doubt, a pragmatic move. In the main, it was a strategic non-kinetic approach to securing the oil infrastructure in the Niger Delta, a civilized strategy of hiring an outlaw to checkmate his ilk. It always works.There are indications that Tantita is doing a fairly good job at its contracted assignment, deploying a combination of experience, vast local network, technology and hardball disposition, to deliver on its mandate. The once volatile region has been relatively calm thereafter.
The incident of August 2023, in which the Navy arrested four Tantita staff who, the company said, were on duty, was but one, among several frictional engagements between two parties that were supposed to be on the same side, in a crucial counter-criminal task to secure Nigeria’s imperilled economic mainstay.
For reasons, known and unknown, the military, specifically the Navy and Tantita Security Services never struck a cordial chord from the onset. The relationship between the two sides remains marked by unease and simmering tension.
Last week, Tompolo, chairman of Tantita Security Services, sent out a distress call, as it were, lamenting that the task of securing the oil infrastructure, which his company was contracted to handle, is being made arduous. Speaking with the leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), at his head office at Oporozo, Warri South-West LGA of Delta State, Chief Ekpemupolo, pleaded for support.
He informed the public that he is now a marked man, by dint of his commitment to combat crude oil theft.
Tompolo pointedly accused the Navy of economic sabotage, alleging that, “Just a few days ago, our team intercepted a vessel in Port Harcourt and the Navy opened fire on Tantita Security while we were accompanied by the Police, DSS and Civil Defence”. It is a scenario reminiscent of the August 2023 incident. In other words, between the two sides, there remains no love lost.
Even for a tough guy, Tompolo seems to be worried. As he complained, “In the course of this surveillance, we have stepped on many toes of people over there in Lagos and Abuja…I cannot travel anywhere. If I must travel, I have to go with two or three security personnel”.
This would have been poetic, had it not been made seriously pertinent by the grievous national impact of the phenomenon of oil theft.
Life never ceases to amaze. The scenario of Tompolo, being led by higher forces, as it seems, through the crucibles of patriotism, as expiation for life earlier lived, is significant.
The value of the pipeline surveillance contract to Tompolo’s Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited is reported to be in the region of N48 billion. Even for all that, Tompolo and his Tantita appear to be confronting more than they bargained for.
But the military high command does not seem to be impressed. Few days after Tompolo complained in Delta State, the Nigerian Armed Forces responded in Abuja, scoffing at his public complaint. Major General Edward Buba, Director of Defence Media Operations, shot back at Tompolo, warning him that “the military will not succumb to cheap blackmail… We should work together in the interest of our nation. The military had done extremely well in curtailing the activities of oil theft and economic saboteurs”.
By Buba’s assessment, “the military should be commended”. He added that what the military seeks is “cooperation and not conflict” Alas, the basis for this cooperation does not seem to exist at the moment.
The friction between the military, a consequential state institution and Tantita Securities Services, a private entity, contracted to render a sensitive service to the state, seems to replicate the untidy, hazily defined relationship between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and Dangote Refinery, which was discussed here a fortnight ago. Enough of these repeated scenarios of government compounding problems in various sectors of the society through tardy decisions on strange collaborations, that are not preceded by thorough analysis of cost and implications.
The military has the statutory responsibility for securing the territorial integrity of the country. Tantita has a professional capacity that government considers useful in securing vital oil infrastructure.Now,if these two entities cannot even agree on the nature of the menace they are supposed to tackle together, or how to proceed with their joint task, it is difficult to see a meaningful and sustainable outcome of such a discordant campaign. The analogy here is of two hunters on a hunting expedition and one keeps insisting that the leg of the other resembles that of the quarry. Can anything good come of such expedition? The setting is a recipe for calamity, one way or another.
Without doubt, the military is uncomfortable with the engagement of Tantita Security Services. Unfortunately, they have little or no choice in the matter. The political leaders that took the decision to engage Tompolo, obviously have other considerations beyond the kinetic. Of course, nobody asked the opinion of the military high command before cobtracting Tompolo’s firm.Buhari offered the initial contract to Tantita.Tinubu renewed it.
While it is not difficult to appreciate the misgivings of the military in this matter, it cannot be denied that certain circumstances and reports, over the years, lent public support to the engagement of such private security services as Tantita.
It is doubtful that Tompolo and his group will have the temerity to frontally accuse the military of aiding and abetting oil theft, if they did not have reasonable evidence to back such a weighty charge.
The military does not often care about public perception and rating. It should realize in this instance, however, that many believe the allegation that their men are not exactly averse to the lure of lucre on the high seas and the creeks. Some of their men have been alleged,over time,to have turned into major stakeholders in oil bunkering and oil theft enterprises in the Delta zone.
The military high command need, therefore,to do more to prove the uncompromised professionalism of its men in this contentious oil matter. It is a big test of discipline, no doubt.
Then again, there is the fact of Tantita deploying drones and satellite imagery equipment in their surveillance of oil pipelines, facilities that the military should have, but hardly put to work, at least to the best knowledge of the public.If they have been deploying such tools effectively,maybe there would have been no need for the likes of Tantita. The effective deployment of such modern technology tools and the result they bring,attract support to private security companies.
Nigeria remains the ultimate land of contradictions and unimaginable configuration of realities. Just look at this scenario; yesterday Tompolo was the foremost anti- state militant, pitched against the government and chased by the military. Now, he is the personification of a committed patriot, substantiated by the government, through a tantalizing state contract. And here he is, accusing the military,the same military, of economic sabotage. Such an uncommon turn in the streak of fate,rarely found elsewhere. Script writers hardly produce such masterpiece plots as Nigeria engenders.
Even for all that, the military owe it a duty, to ensure that there is no validity in the allegations by Tompolo, that they aid and abet oil theft in the Niger Delta.
Unfortunately, there is hardly anyone that holds anyone to higher values in Nigeria these days. So difficult now to know who,exactly, the culprit is.
