Oil theft has security implications – Ex-NEITI boss

The current spate of oil theft in Nigeria has implications for the country’s security, a former executive secretary of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Initiative (NEITI), Mr Waziri Adio, has said.

Adio said this during the virtual launch of a book, ‘From Storeroom to Boardroom,’ written by Babs Omotowa, a former managing director of the Nigeria LNG Limited in Lagos earlier this week.

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He said the amount of money that Nigeria is losing to oil theft in the Niger Delta region is enough to destabilise the country if it falls into “the wrong hands”.

“When I was in NEITI, we did a report that showed within a period of ten years, the country lost a total of $42 billion to oil theft and sabotage and related issues. That was on average $4bn per year. Just imagine if that kind of money falls into the wrong hands. So, that is enough to make a country unstable.

“There was a time when we were shouting about it and the country was not paying attention. The country was losing between 150,000 barrels and 300,000 barrels per day and the country was not paying attention,” he said.

Nigeria, Africa’s leading oil producer, has found itself in a precarious situation where it has to pay for refined oil products at higher prices because its local refineries are not functional, so the benefits of a higher crude oil are lost to the nation.

The founder of Sahara Energy, Tonye Cole, said oil theft has many dimensions, including political, social, and environmental.

Oil theft, he said, “is a very political problem that needs a political solution”.