Illegal oil bunkering/oil theft

This is the theft of crude oil directly from pipelines, flow stations, and export facilities. While bunkering is the term used to describe the process of filling up a ship with oil (Garuba, Reference Garuba2010), its illegality is an euphemism for theft (HRW, 2003), and has become a generic term encompassing not only unauthorized loading of ships, but also all acts involving the theft, diversion, and smuggling of crude oil (Obasi, Reference Obasi, Roll and Sperling2011). The theft in question is premised on the constitutional provision that ownership and control of all minerals in, under, and upon any land, and of rivers, streams, and watercourses in Nigeria are vested in the Federal Government (Section 44(3) of the 1999 Constitution, as originated in the 1946 Mineral Ordinance).

There have been shifting trends in oil theft in Nigeria from militia-assisted, to local community-assisted, and to official-assisted oil theft.Footnote ² It is a thriving business in the Niger Delta; and ‘the three types of illegal oil bunkering are small-scale pilfering for the local market, large-scale tapping of pipelines to fill large tankers for export, and excess lifting of crude oil beyond the licensed amount’ (Asuni, Reference Asuni2009: 1). The principal militia group was the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF), headed by Asari Dokubo and later joined by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF) led by Henry Okah and Tom Ateke, respectively, who resorted to illegal oil bunkering as means of financing their operations. Oil bunkering is organized through a vast state-centred syndicate, implicating high-ranking military officers, politicians, the security apparatuses, and even the Niger Delta special military task forces and the Navy coast guards (Watts, Reference Watts2008: 59) which are deployed by the state to maintain peace in the region. Substantial evidence indicates that the militia only engaged in theft and bunkering to a small degree, but provided cover and security to various local and international oil theft cartels for huge fees. At the local level, the security forces, including the Nigerian Navy were also ‘settled’ with cash payments to ensure military operations and patrols did not interfere with illegal bunkering. As noted by Garuba (Reference Garuba2010: 12):

Thus, top government officials, the military and some highly placed Nigerians, including top traditional rulers in the oil-producing areas had been labelled as some of the culprits, and none has ever been interrogated or charged, thus buttressing the report by Fortune and Class (2010) that officials in the NNPC and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources established ‘an enduring platform by which they continue to divert crude oil sale opportunities to their preferred middleman at a discounted premium leaving enough premium margin for the cabal members when the middle man sells off the crude in the international market’.Footnote ³

This is corroborated by Asuni (Reference Asuni2009: 1) as, ‘the enabling environment for illegal oil bunkering includes high levels of unemployed youth, armed ethnic militias, ineffective and corrupt law enforcement, protective government officials and politicians, corrupt oil company staff, established international markets for stolen oil, and the overall context of endemic corruption’. Thus, the complexity of players in the illegal oil bunkering business, including local youth, members of the Nigerian military, the political class, and foreign ship owners, makes it difficult to tackle the problem unilaterally. This is why previous attempts by the Nigerian government and international community to address illegal oil bunkering had limited success in reducing the flow of blood oil (Asuni, Reference Asuni2009; Odalonu, Reference Odalonu2015).

The techniques employed in oil bunkering makes it Nigeria's most profitable illegal private business in the petroleum industry (Onuoha, Reference Onuoha2009). It is a hazardous process that is very pervasive in the creeks of the Niger Delta where oil pipelines criss-cross the region. When crude oil is being pumped through the pipelines, sometimes at a pressure of 600 pounds per square inch, the bunkerers are able to fill up to a 1,000 metric tonne barge in a matter of hours. The barge is then moved offshore to a transport ship and the oil is sold on the high seas. The oil bunkerers’ sophisticated operation does not require the co-operation of oil company staff as the bunkerers tap directly into the pipelines at a site removed from oil company facilities, and connect the pipes to barges that are hidden in small creeks under cover of mangrove forests (HRW, 2003).

The reasons for these nefarious activities are not far-fetched. Armed militia groups in the Niger Delta extend their politico-criminal agenda out to sea and those involved in illegal bunkering also perform attacks on ships at sea with attendant incidents of piracy. These groups target the country's mainstream crude oil production as a grand strategy of pressurizing the Nigerian State to accede to their demands for true federalism and a greater involvement in the management of oil wealth.

Maritime piracy

Maritime piracy, especially in the Gulf of Guinea (GoG) region, has grown at an alarming rate, posing risks to international shipping along one of the continent's busiest routes. Nigeria loses about $9 billion per annum to piracy and $15.5 billion annually to illegal oil bunkering as well as other security breaches and leakages, which are features of, and contributors to the complexity of maritime insecurity in the Gulf.

According to Onuoha (Reference Onuoha2012), piracy in African waters is a subject of serious concern to not only African states but also the international community. These activities are concentrated in the Somali coast/the Gulf of Aden along the East African Coast; Nigeria's territorial waters in West Africa; and the Mozambique Channel/Cape Sea route in Southern Africa. Since 2003, maritime piracy has been on the increase around Africa in spite of growing national, regional, and international efforts at improving security in these sea routes. As shown in Table 1 below, all efforts at stopping the problem are yet to yield dividends.

Table 1.

Nigerian piracy against ships in African waters, 2003–2015

Sources: Adapted from ICC-IMB Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships Annual Reports, 2003–2016.

There is collusion and a high-wire political network involved in the attacks, even from government officials. According to a PMNews of 17 October 2012, the pirate hijack of MT Energy Centurion was coordinated by a gang comprised of both Nigerians and foreigners. As at 2012, there are about 1,250 trained pirates across Nigeria, having about 3,000 high calibre military weapons kept in different parts of the country. The syndicate involves a network that works closely with them by giving them information regarding the vessel to hijack. ‘Operations are sponsored by powerful people . . . even in the Presidency [because] there is a lot of money in oil theft as each member of the gang of pirates makes not less than N10 million from each operation. The NNPC and Ministry of Petroleum and security agencies feed them with relevant information on vessels to hijack, and the gang starts work after part payment has been made, with the balance paid after the operation.’Footnote ⁴ As noted by Akinsola (Reference Akinsola2015), once pirates are on board, they hold crews at gunpoint until a ransom is paid, with amounts usually paid in millions of US dollars.

Pirates increasingly modify their tactics by hijacking fishing vessels, particularly within Nigerian waters, and using the same methods to attack other vessels operating off the coasts of neighbouring countries such as Benin and Cameroon. Recent attacks have extended further out at sea and have focused largely on oil-laden vessels, to steal the petroleum product. A powerful transnational mafia – with a vast knowledge of the operation of the oil industry – finances and facilitates the operations of the pirates that target oil tankers, by giving them vital information such as names of ships, the course they will take, value of cargo, and extent of insurance cover. When taken hostage by pirates, the period of captivity lasts an average of ten days.

Piracy in the GoG has not been evenly distributed. The incidents of piracy in the region decreased from 64 attacks in 2003 to 56 in 2004 and 25 in 2005, and increased from 31 in 2006 to 53 in 2007 and 59 in 2008. Although it declined from 48 in 2009 to 39 in 2010, it picked up again with 53 cases recorded in 2011 (Saul, Reference Saul2012). The majority of the attacks recorded between 2003 and 2011 occurred in Nigerian waters (55%), even as most attacks in Nigerian waters go unreported. Between 2003 and 2005, there was a decline in the number of attacks in Nigerian waters, and overall in the GoG. However, there was an increase in the number of attacks between 2007 and 2008. The increase is mostly related to the upsurge in the activities, in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region, of ethnic militants who were protesting perceived marginalization of the region by successive governments in Nigeria. Characteristic of the militant protests was the emergence and activities of the MEND, among other groups. The operational tactics of the militant groups included hostage taking of oil workers, sabotage of oil facilities, attacks on oil vessels, illegal oil bunkering, kidnapping, and ransom receipts, among others.

In a bid to contain the destructive and disruptive activities of militant groups, the Nigerian government granted amnesty to militants in three phases starting from August 2009 to free them from prosecution for participation in different acts of violent criminality in the region. The amnesty initiative saw over 30,000 militants surrender large cache of arms and weapons (Aghedo, Reference Aghedo2015: 1). About 2,760 assorted guns, 287,445 ammunitions of different calibre, 18 gun-boats, 763 dynamites, 1,090 dynamite caps, 3,155 magazines, and several other military accessories, such as dynamite cables, bullet-proof jackets, and jack-knives, were recovered from them (Onuoha et al., Reference Onuoha, Ezirim and Nwogu2014: 131) were recovered from them.

The acceptance of amnesty by most militants partly accounted for the decrease in the number of attacks witnessed in 2009 and 2010. However, the rejection of the amnesty by a faction of MEND partly explained the resurgence of pirate attacks in 2011. There were ten reported piracy incidents in the first two months of 2012 alone, and in early March 2012, MEND claimed responsibility for shooting four police officers on a boat patrolling the Nembe River, while indicating ties with pirates groups in the region (Alessi and Hanson, 2012). After the 2015 general elections in which the incumbent, Goodluck Jonathan, a Niger Delta indigene, lost, there was another upsurge which was expected. There is always the strong fear that any action by government viewed with suspicion by the ex-militants could trigger crisis. A recent invitation of Chief Government Ekpemupolo (General Tompolo), erstwhile militant leader, by anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to answer to charges on 40-counts of an alleged N45.9bn fraud against him and nine others led to an early morning blow-up of strategic oil pipelines in Ikpokpo and Odidi flow stations, mostly in Gbaramatu kingdom in Warri South Local Government Area in Delta State, barely hours after the charges were laid at the Federal High Court in Lagos (Dubem, Reference Dubem2016).

Oil pipeline vandalization/attacks on oil installations

The vandalization of oil pipelines, particularly for petrol, became commonplace in the terminal stages of military rule in Nigeria, but it has recently assumed alarming proportions. A closer look at the nature and trend of oil pipeline vandalization in Nigeria reveals three important dimensions, namely an increase in the frequency of attacks on the pipelines, increased sophistication in the technology used, and concentration on the three axes that are crucial to petroleum products distribution in the country.

The vandals are mainly unemployed youths operating in remote areas and communities through which oil pipelines pass. They puncture the pipes or take advantage of ruptured/leaking pipes to siphon fuel or other petroleum products into drums, plastic containers, or storage cans for sale on the black market. The technology employed is quite rudimentary, involving the use of funnels, drilling tools and plastic hoses to siphon the products. Before 1999, there were just few cases: 7, 33, 34, and 57 reported cases in 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998, respectively. The return to democracy in 1999 witnessed an unprecedented increase in the rate of oil pipeline vandalization. From 497 cases reported in 1999, it increased to 909 cases in 2000, 971 in 2004, 3,224 in 2005, and 3,224 in 2007 (Onuoha, Reference Onuoha2007; African Oil Journal, 2007; NNPC. 2010). Table 2 below shows it all:

Table 2.

Incidences of pipeline vandalization in Nigeria, 2002–2015

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy_in_the_Gulf_of_Guinea; and other sources.

The rise in incidents of pipeline vandalism was accompanied by more technologically sophisticated methods, and complicity of government officials and security agents also seems to have grown. Thus, Ahmed (Reference Ahmed2007) noted:

In the same vein, there are allegations that security agents connive with vandals to steal oil from the pipelines. It has been submitted that security agencies abdicate their responsibility of providing security for the pipelines, as a successful vandalization would be difficult without security connivance (Onuoha, Reference Onuoha2009).

Oil terrorism

Oil terrorism is the deliberate attack of pipeline systems by militias, freedom fighters, and insurgents. In Nigeria, oil terrorism includes the blowing up with explosives of oil pipelines, installations, and platforms, and the seizure of oil barges, oil wells, flow stations, support vessels, and other oil facilities in order to prevent the exploitation and/or distribution of crude oil or its refined products (Onuoha, Reference Onuoha2009; Alawode and Ogunleye, Reference Alawode and Ogunleye2011). Having started in Nigeria in December 2005 when MEND blew up Shell's Opobo pipeline in Delta State (Ibinabo, Reference Ibinabo2007: 3), it has continued unabated.

The major perpetrators of this sabotage are armed groups, particularly militant groups who profess to be defending the cause of the Niger Delta people. Gradually, but steadily, these militants have developed both the tactics and weaponry that have enabled them to launch devastating attacks on onshore oil installations and near offshore rigs. After the arrest of the leader of the NDPVF, Mujahid Asari Dokubo, in September 2005, militant groups in the region instructed all multinational oil companies to leave the region, as they were preparing for a war with the Nigerian government. Since then militants in the region, seeking to control a greater share of the nation's oil wealth, have adopted a terrorist strategy to inflict serious damage on the Nigerian economy with the objective of impairing the capacity of the petroleum industry to export crude oil. By doing so, the Federal Government would lose substantial revenue needed to sustain the machinery of government, and be forced to respond to their political, economic, and environmental demands.

Kidnapping/hostage-taking

Kidnapping applies to all situations where a person is forcibly seized and taken to a place where he/she is held against their will in unlawful confinement. It also describes incidents when persons are lured away and then held illegally (Akpan, Reference Akpan2010). This may involve force. It is a very serious crime, and access to known kidnappers and even kidnapped persons in the past was difficult due to its rarity. However, kidnapping or hostage taking in Nigeria assumed a frightening dimension in the wake of the militancy in the Niger Delta, leading to incessant kidnapping of expatriates working with oil firms and affluent Nigerians or their relations. According to Muozoba (Reference Muozoba2009), the present-day kidnapping in Nigeria began in the form of hostage taking, both of which were alien to Nigeria until they were employed by the militants of the Niger Delta region in January 2006 to press home their demands for equity and resource control. At the time, MEND had kidnapped four expatriate oil workers to draw national and international attention to the plight of the people of the area, and also demanded the sum of $1.5b as ransom; the sum they claimed would be used for the development of the region. Through the special intervention of Goodluck Jonathan, then Governor of Bayelsa State, the oil workers were released after 19 days.

Starting from then, and with the international attention given to it, kidnapping became a daily occurrence in the Niger Delta. As it spread, its purpose also shifted from freedom fighting to a full money-making venture, so much so that many people took it up as a full-time job, and with the connivance of some ‘big men’ believed to be working behind the scene. The victims also cut across all segments, in so far as they could be used to extract reasonable sums of money from their relatives. Men, women, and even children have at one point or another been kidnapped and have stayed for days in the hands of their abductors. Many of them have very horrible stories to tell. Some men were said to have been beaten terribly when there was delay in bringing the ransom. The women are the most vulnerable as the kidnappers sometimes rape them as they await the ransom. Some women are also said to be among the kidnappers, but their works are mainly culinary and luring the victims to their trap.

According to Osumah and Aghedo (Reference Osumah and Aghedo2011: 6), the geography of ransom kidnapping in Nigeria is varied. Although it started in the Niger Delta region, it later spread to other parts of the country, particularly in the south-eastern states such as Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi, and Imo; Edo, Delta (South-South), Lagos, Ekiti, and Ondo (South-West), Kaduna and Kano (North-West), and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja (North-Central).

Many states have had their own shares of kidnapping incidents. The south-eastern states have recorded quite a high rate of kidnappings but the south-southern states remain the origin and home of kidnapping as far as Nigeria is concerned. A study by the Campaign for Democracy in 2012, notes that:

Thus, as widely reported by several media and noted by Taire (Reference Taire2011), the spate of hostage taking in Nigeria has shot her to number four in global ranking, according to the American Federal Bureau of Investigations. Although the Bureau did not disclose the three countries ahead of Nigeria in the ranking, it explained that the cases of hostage taking across the world have been under-reported.