The Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited has requested for a special court to try crude oil thieves and pipeline vandals in Nigeria. The special court, the national oil company reasons, will accelerate the prosecution of offenders.
The NNPC group managing director, Mele Kyari, made the call on Thursday in Abuja while showing the House of Representatives’ Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream), graphics of how the country’s crude oil assets are being vandalized and the products stolen.
“I am not sure that we are short of legislation; it is life imprisonment for attack on these facilities. So, there are laws to support this. All we need to do is to increase the advocacy so that the legal process takes its course, prosecutions are done timely.
“I will recommend that we set up a special court for this. Such cases will be speedily dealt with, so that it is not just the ordinary ‘small’ people that you see at those locations that are prosecuted,” Kyari said
Describing oil theft and illegal refining as an elitist business, Kyari said the culprits are known, but the authorities lack the power and to prosecute them.
“We know that to sell crude oil in the international market, it is not the business of the ordinary people that you see in these illegal refineries. It is an elitist business and we must have the courage to set up very independent special courts to try cases related to this.
“Otherwise, the impact it has on our economic outlook – our ability to generate foreign exchange and in terms of energy security for this country – is threatened by a very few people.
“Clearly, they are a few people. It is not beyond us and I am very confident that the leadership being given by the Chief of Defence Staff alongside the service chiefs and others, will probably in another one to two months, bring some sanity. We are also working on sustainability, not just recovery but to have a sustainable framework,” Kyari said.
He explained that the situation however not irredeemable and helpless, though daunting situation. According to him, there is collaboration of some sort between the thieves and the security outfits managing the locations.
“There is a massive activity going on now by the government’s security agencies in collaboration with the industry – the NNPC and two regulatory institutions, and of course, the Nigerian Navy, the Nigerian Army, the Nigerian Air Force and the Department of State Services.
“Other agencies like NIMASA are also involved. They are all aligned, working together to contain this situation. And we are seeing clear results. Yes, we have not gotten back to production but clearly today, activities that are going on promise that within the next one to two months we will restore some level of normalcy.
“As we sit, there are a number of arrests made both by the Department of State Services of high calibre oil thieves and the JTF, even by the Nigerian Navy in the last two weeks. And many more arrests are taking place, many of these illegal refineries are being taken down and insertions are being constantly removed.
“We believe that these interventions, without speaking much of the details on these, will pay off and we will be able to restore production to normalcy. And this is centrally coordinated; I will not speak about the details but I can share with you that there is a coordinated action now that will clearly pay off because we are using a number of strategies, including involvement of community-based security outfits.”
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