•People, agencies involved in smuggling Nigeria’s oil
Big oil cats stealing Nigeria’s liquid gold may be perfecting their cover ups upon President Muhammadu Buhari’s announcement that one million barrels of crude were siphoned daily by the ministers and aides of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Aso Rock spokesman, Garba Shehu, has clarified that Buhari meant 250,000 barrels, not one million, which would have been almost half of total daily export.
Even with that, Ben Nwabueze is not impressed.
He has asked Buhari to extend his probe down the years, beginning “at least” from the tenure of Olusegun Obasanjo, and to include Umaru Yar’Adua, instead of making a scapegoat of Jonathan.
To make the exercise credible, said Nwabueze, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and professor of constitutional law, the administrations of all the three former presidents should be scrunitised to recover all stolen funds.
“No probe that leaves out Obasanjo regime means anything. Why should you probe only Jonathan? Why? he wondered in an interview with TheNiche, his first major one since the general election.
Nigeria needs a new beginning, he reiterated, but that it would be a witch-hunt if only Jonathan’s tenure is investigated.
“The issue of probing is another great dilemma for me. It is a tricky issue, I mean the war against corruption.
“I believe the vast majority of Nigerians think there can be no proper effective change unless corruption is effectively dealt with, not only for the present and for the future, but also dealing with past corruption,” counselled Nwabueze, aged 83.
“We all are yearning that Nigeria needs a new beginning and the question of probe is at the heart of it. Probing past governments is not an easy matter, you will be on it for years, it is not something that ends in a year or two.
“If you have to probe governments, let us say from IBB era to Sani Abacha, Abdulsalam to Obasanjo, no probe that leaves Obasanjo out means anything because that is where corruption records its greatest height.
“You cannot tell me that you are giving Nigeria a new beginning if you don’t probe Obasanjo’s administration. I agree with Jonathan. If you are going to probe, and there should be probe, however long it will take.
“If we are sincere that we are going to probe then we should probe all the past regimes not Jonathan alone, at least you must start from Obasanjo ….
“If you probe only one past government without Obasanjo, it will look as it’s a witch-hunt. And to me there is no abiding lesson as far as stopping corruption is concerned.
“I know that the Obasanjo regime was corrupt and that Obasanjo personally was clever using surrogates here and there, building palaces on the mountain. He was using surrogates to contribute money for his university and his library.
“Those who were reported to have voted millions for those projects, did they vote it because of their love for Obasanjo as a person? How many billions was involved in all those projects?
“When one talks about some of this issues one gets angry. If Buhari is going to probe only Jonathan, as far as I am concerned it means nothing.”
Oil theft syndicate
Oil theft involves an international syndicate of politicians, top military officials, businessmen, and warlords, who use others to cover their tracks.
“You may have to peel up four of five layers of men to get to the bottom of these operations,” a source in the military familiar with the business told TheNiche anonymously.
The crime also involves officials of the Villa, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), local chiefs, militants, and petty thieves.
Gathering storm
Buhari disclosed in Washing on Tuesday, July 21 that “we are now looking for evidence of shipping some of our crude, their destinations and where and which accounts they were paid into and in which country.
“When we get as much as we can get as soon as possible, we will approach those countries to freeze those accounts and go to court, prosecute those people and let the accounts be taken to Nigeria.
“The amount of money is mind-boggling but we have started getting documents.
“We have started getting documents where some of the senior people in government, former ministers, some of them had as much as five accounts and were moving about one million barrels per day on their own.
“We have started getting those documents … to trace the sale of the crude or transfer of money from ministries, departments, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“We will ask for the cooperation of those countries to return those monies to the federation account and we will use those documents to arrest those people and prosecute them. This, I promise Nigerians.”
But a right hand man of the president, former Petroleum Minister, Tam David-West, told TheNiche that the information about ministers stealing oil and lodging the money in foreign banks, should have been better used as an ambush.
“There are some things that he [Buhari] should not have said – that ministers are stealing crude and taking the money abroad,” David-West noted, but added that he trusts Buhari’s judgment.
Togo triangle
TheNiche reported exclusively on May 25, 2014 how a cartel of international businessmen and foot soldiers of Nigeria’s oil barons converge on ‘Togo Triangle’, a floating business hub on the high seas, where trillions of naira of stolen crude from Nigeria is loaded on ships owned by foreigners.
An undercover investigation by TheNiche discovered that “a vessel may have authorisation to lift 60,000 barrels of crude but someone at the terminal decide to feed it with 140,000 barrels.
“That is not a mistake you know. The vessel will later transfer the surplus to another tanker. You and I are not to blame. We are only looking for something to eat,” a middleman of the trade said in Togo.
Modus operandi
An excerpt of the special investigation by award winning journalist, Emmanuel Mayah, is reproduced below:
Almost on a weekly basis, a mixed tribe of fortune hunters arrive Togo and are chauffeured to luxury hotels. A few, for strategic reasons, prefer to tuck away in neighbouring Ghana and Benin from where they track their illicit cargoes.
Though this reporter had arrived Lome by road, the taxi driver was still quick to ask if he was from Nigeria. Without waiting for confirmation of his hunch, he wanted to know if the visitor had any crude cargo to sell.
The driver added that he had a brother who could help out with bank transactions. He had another brother who could help arrange boat charter to the Togo Triangle. Charter fee was $3,000.
The solicitation did not end with the taxi man. One of the hotel porters and a barman offered to provide contacts in the oil business.
Dozens of small service companies have sprung up in Lome, all providing sundry necessities to foreigners doing illegal trade in the Togo Triangle. The sheer number of boat charter services transporting oil traders to the triangle gives a good first impression of an illicit international market that may have become the pride of a tiny country whose best known export yet is footballer Emmanuel Adebayoor.
For $200, this reporter got a seat in a supply boat carrying provisions and local tradesmen going to the Togo Triangle. The triangle attracts sundry suppliers of goods, including food, alcohol, cigarettes, textiles and DVDs. Pimps and prostitutes are not left out.
Tradesmen shuttle among vessels just as other kinds of businessmen barter their wares for cheap fuel supplied by crews. Ships use diesel to run their engines and power generators on board.
Crew members, running low on cash, barter diesel for critical provisions.
Aside white foreigners, West African nationals of Ghana, Benin, Liberia, and Nigeria mill around. Naval gunboats occasionally plough the waters, providing a semblance of security in an obviously lawless territory.
Posing as a middleman from Nigeria scouting for buyers, this reporter met a Togolese by the name Narcisse Novinyo who said he was a trade facilitator.
A retired produce inspector, he knew almost everything about Nigeria, its people and its president, even though he had never been to the country.
What has changed his life for good was not his paltry pension, rather the Nigerian crude sold in Togo.
Novinyo was careful never to use the words ‘stolen crude’ as he narrated his experience working with Nigerians.
For the next three days he stuck to this reporter like an infectious disease. He produced documents as proofs of previous transactions he had facilitated.
Stolen as the crude oil may be, transactions are surprisingly covered by carefully-worded documents.
When contacted for comment, NNPC General Manager (Public Affairs), Ohi Alegbe, pleaded for more time to find out the true situation.
A few minutes later, another employee of the corporation, who identified himself simply as Frank, said: “We are not aware that such an illegal place exists.”
He also asked for time to get back to TheNiche but failed to do so at press time.