Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Environment, Ned Nwoko, has accused the military of being complicit in the theft of crude oil in the country. He said the military’s practice of destroying vessels carrying illegal or stolen crude oil was a way of concealing or destroying evidence of their involvement.
Mr Nwoko made this allegation in an interview in Abuja, where he questioned the rationale behind the destruction of vessels apprehended for crude oil theft or lifting. He said such vessels should be preserved as evidence and used to prosecute the culprits in court.
He said, “You know, if somebody is found in possession of stolen goods, do you say, oh, the way to deal with this is to destroy it? No. You take it from them, you document it, you preserve it, you charge the culprits. And then you produce that in evidence against them in court and then ultimately return that product to the owner.”
He added that loading crude oil from vessels takes a long time and requires the involvement of various officials from the oil companies, the NNPC, the police, military and the joint task force. He alleged that these officials (Military) were compromised and bought over by the oil thieves, and that they became rich within a short period of time.
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He said, “Well, I think the military is complicit. You know the reason they do this, because some of them might have compromised. They have been bought over because to load this kind of commodity vessels- the crude – it takes weeks sometimes because of the size of the vessels, it takes time.
“So it’s not as if you just come one hour, you load it and then you run. So it takes time to get to the point of loading, and most of them are actually loaded from the official platforms. So who are those involved? Who are those managing those platforms? The oil companies, The producing companies, NNPC officials, the police, may be all of them are involved.
“You know what is common with these personnel, I mean the joint task force; within a short period of time, they are all rich. They are all buying houses or buying cars or buying everything you know. So yeah, they have compromised.
“That is the only reason why I think they cannot wait for the vessels to be investigated, but rather destroy the evidence because they know it can lead to them. They destroy them, they burn them,” Mr Nwoko said.