Army, Navy, and Police Own Refining Camps and Are Among Oil Thieves-TSSL

 

The Federal Government has raised its game in the surveillance of oil pipelines by engaging private pipeline surveillance companies. The Federal Government had previously lived in denial of the true cause of the

rapid increase in oil bunkering, also known as kpofire, in the Niger Delta.

One contractor is Tantita Security Services Limited, TSSL, which is run by Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, the high chief of the Ijaw ethnic group and leader of the now-defunct Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

Erroneous intelligence

Until recently, the security assessment held that the monsters bursting into the nation's pipelines and hemorrhaging the country were some militants and other misguided miscreants, harbored by villagers in the various riverine towns in the oil-rich region.

The intelligence assessment revealed that they were important oil thieves who were financing the activities of minor oil thieves despite using an ambiguous nomenclature.

The government has adopted a single-track approach based on incorrect information, which includes detaining certain operators and demolishing the camps and machinery used for illicit oil refining in the creeks of the Niger Delta. However, the real harm endured since the principal perpetrators didn't change their ways.