Chairman of the Bayelsa Traditional Rulers’ Council, Bubaraye Dakolo, has said the youths of the Niger Delta should not be paraded as oil thieves but rather investigation should be carried out into the activities of high profile personalities who are the real culprits behind illegal oil bunkering.

On Friday, a twelve-man-crew ship carrying  150,000 metric tons of crude oil was seized on Nigerian waters off Escravos area of Delta State by a pipeline surveillance company, Tantita Security Service Nigeria Limited and the Joint Task Force, Operation Delta Safe, before it was set ablaze.

According to Cap. Warredi Enisuoh, Executive Director, Operations Technical, Tantita Security Services, “The whole point of destroying the ship is to send a message to those who invest in illegality in Nigerian waters that this is what it is going to take if they so wish to engage in this kind of business.”

The rogue vessel in question, MT Tura II, was initially named MT Ali Riza Bay but underwent an illegal name change after escaping law enforcement agencies in the past.

In an interview with ARISE NEWS, Bubaraye Dakolo stated that the young people who were allegedly apprehended as the masterminds of these illegal oil bunkering schemes should not be identified as thieves but rather re-oriented against those who commission them to do so.

“I can tell you for free that the vehicle was burnt because it was cheaper to burn it rather than to reign in the oil thief that is behind it all.

“Usually what Nigeria has done for decades is to parade the young, helpless, uneducated youth from the Niger Delta as the typical thief. But I argue that he shouldn’t be called a thief but to be rehabilitated.

“He belongs to a place where you have to educate him, reorientate him and make him a patriotic Nigerian.

“He’s a victim of oil thieves. Today he may need to hear that the real thief of oil is someone who has a yacht, someone who has a golf course, someone who cannot sleep a night in the Niger Delta because of mosquitoes and insecurity.

“He’s someone who has land in Banana Island, in London, in Abuja, in Frankfurt, in New York City. Those are the thieves.”

Bubaraye, who is the author of the book, ‘The Riddle Of the Oil Thief’ also said in the interview that not only is the burning of the ship and the oil a waste of resources, but also hazardous to the lives of the Niger Delta people healthwise and especially because their main source of income comes from fishing in their riverine environs.

“Last year there was an experience where a particular vessel was apprehended with our crude oil and then of course a few days ago, another one,  the MT Tura II with a 150k metric tons. To make it clear, that is about one million six hundred thousand barrels and that amounts to well over a hundred million dollars which runs into billions of Naira. That is the amount and value that was inside there. And that is also approximately what Nigeria produces in a day.

“It takes a while to load that volume, so definitely it must have been loaded somewhere that is an authorised loading bay. So the authorities of NNPC were supposed to know and I think they know.

“And then of course usually in all of these places there are law enforcements at the terminals. So definitely all of these agencies knew that this was taking place.

“However, let’s give benefit of the doubt to the establishment that arrested it and to the Joint task Force that have also arrested it.

“But setting that particular vehicle ablaze is completely out of 2023. It’s something that should happen in maybe 1440 or 1450. This is 2023, we’re talking about ozone depletion, we’re talking about Nigeria not having all the money we should have for our welfare and then you burn off billions of Naira, multi millions of dollars worth of crude and then in the process, poison us. It is completely unacceptable. It is something that has to stop.

“The federal government, the presidency has to issue a quick order that they should stop burning or wasting our resources.”

“As for those of us in the Niger Delta, you’re poisoning us and killing us.”

Glamour Adah