The Ogulagha Kingdom People’s Front has called on the federal government to extend and expand the current scope of the pipeline surveillance contract with Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited.
This is as the group labelled those calling for the termination of Tantita’s contract as enemies of Nigeria.
The revered group said this in a strong-worded open letter addressed to President Bola Tinubu, wherein it described the “unending calls for termination and non-renewal of the pipeline surveillance security contract as presently constituted has become quite compelling, given the
misinformation peddled across the media space.”
In the letter signed by the duo of Elder F. E. Seimode Esq and Comrade shedrack Agediga, Chairman and Mobilisation Cordinator, respectively, the group said Tantita’s “methodology has proven to be a veritable approach in the execution of the pipeline surveillance contract.”
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The statement titled “THOSE CALLING FOR THE TERMINATION AND NON-
RENEWAL OF THE TANTITA PIPELINE SURVEILLANCE SECURITY SERVICES CONTRACT IN THE NIGER-DELTA
REGION ARE ENEMIES OF THE NIGERIAN STATE: A CALL FOR CAUTION, “reads in full;
The highly revered Ogulagha Kingdom Peoples Front is a home-based socio-cultural entity with a mandate to speak truth to power with undiluted facts and figures aimed at putting things in perspective without distorting facts.
The urgent need to respond to the unending call for termination and non-renewal of the pipeline surveillance security contract as presently constituted has become quite compelling, given the misinformation peddled across the media space by persons who lack clear understanding of oil exploitation and associated nitty-gritty in the Ijaw oil-bearing communities of Delta State in the Niger-Delta Region.
The hue and cry by some paid agents of a privileged class across ethnic divides within the Niger-Delta Region over the pipeline surveillance security contract currently handled by Tantita Security Services Ltd to secure the nation’s critical oil infrastructure in the region has become multi-dimensional with weighty political undertones, far beyond mere economic and political considerations.
The intertwined economic and political considerations that often engender and propel natural survival instincts in the human race through the ages are today shamelessly pursued at the expense of moral values and good conscience. People no longer have sound moral values that constantly speak to their consciences.
The crave for political and economic gains has both graduated to occupy and take the front seat whilst morals and good conscience have been assigned to the passenger’s seat. Conscience no longer speaks through the people but political and economic considerations do.
The historical evolution of surveillance contracts in the Niger-Delta Region is as old as oil exploration and exploitation activities itself in the region. There are names that cannot, historically speaking, be brushed aside or forgotten with ease when we talk about surveillance contracts awarded in the Niger-Delta Region by the Federal Government, NNPC, SPDC, Chevron, Nigerian Agip Oil Company amongst other oil giants in our nation.
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The Ijaw oil-bearing communities alone of Ogulagha Kingdom in Delta State contribute a significant or major proportion of revenue accruable to the federation account through oil and gas exploitation and thus, the warehouse to critical national oil/gas industrial infrastructure in the kingdom.
These critical oil and gas infrastructures in our dear Ogulagha Kingdom include but are not limited to the Forcados crude oil storage export terminal; North-Bank; South-Bank; Yokiri; Estuary; Afremo; Meji; Forcados/Yokiri Integrated Gas Project and crude oil loading platform with several oil wells scattered all over the kingdom as a revenue base for the entire country.
So, as a people or group in that vantage position, we speak not only as critical stakeholders but as a people with clear understanding of the oil and gas industry and the management issues arising therefrom, whose voices the government must not only listen to but must act upon appropriately.
The evolutionary history of the sixties through the seventies to the 21st-century oil dynamics-driven political economy in our country shows contractors from a section of the region have always dominated the entire value chain of the surveillance contract across all divides in the country.
There were no Ijaw men or women as registered contractors with the oil firms that operated within the Ijaw communities doing any of these jobs. These jobs were at their doorsteps. No fuss, no name-calling nor any form of protests either by an individual or group from the Ijaw extraction was ever called to question despite the fact that these contracts were sourced and executed in Ijaw communities.
The multi-trillion-dollar Forcados crude oil storage export terminal in Ogulagha community was the behave of all surveillance contracts and contracting activities in the region aside from the Bonny crude oil storage export terminal in Rivers State.
The natural resources that abound in the Ijaw oil-bearing communities are the major sources of the wealth amassed by those other ethnic nationalities who are today issuing fire and brimstone in the region.
The big names we hear today across the ethnic divide in the region all made and derive their wealth and fame from our oil-bearing Ijaw communities.
The background stories of these wealths cannot be complete without reference to the Forcados crude oil storage export terminal in Ogulagha community of Ogulagha Kingdom in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State.
The descendants and siblings riding on the backs of their fathers to whom the Ijaws extended their benevolence are the same ones gradually and systematically undermining the significant roles of the Ijaws in enabling them to attain the fame and wealth they all enjoy to live a life of affluence today without remorse and repentance.
The ever-willing Ijaw brothers were always given their support and cooperation. No threats whatsoever were issued to curtail or forestall any perceived economic dominance in their territory. Peaceful co-existence was the watchword.
The foundational wealth amassed by those at the forefront of the campaign of calumny against the operations of Tantita Security Services Ltd in the region is traceable to the Forcados crude oil storage export terminal in Ogulagha Town.
These sets of non-indigenous contractors from across the ethnic divide in the region measured and featured majorly in the area of grass-cutting, welding and painting contracts, and the provision of surveillance/security guards as labour supply contractors amongst others in the Forcados crude oil storage export terminal in Ogulagha and the associated facilities within the Ogulagha Kingdom.
The time has however come for us to call a spade a spade and condemn in the very strongest terms the ongoing mindless and criminal campaign of calumny orchestrated and sponsored by select privileged individuals in the region masquerading behind the scene to destabilise and cause unnecessary tension in the Niger-Delta Region for mere economic and political gains.
Recall, this pipeline surveillance security contract has passed through several contractors and individuals in the region before Tantita Security Services Ltd came onboard about some three years ago with a more systematic and well-coordinated result-oriented approach in the sector.
When the erstwhile bigwigs or names from a section of the region handled the same pipeline surveillance contract in the immediate past in the region, the array of sponsors of today’s campaign of calumny were never seen.
No single group or persons from the Ijaw ethnic nationality embarked on the mindless campaign against those who shabbily handled the pipeline surveillance security contract without impacts on the people.
Today, these unpatriotic individuals hide under the cloak of their respective tribes with low sectional idiocracies and are shamefully calling the management of Tantita Security Services Ltd all manner and forms of unprintable names.
All of this is designed to discredit the management of Tantita Security Services Ltd and take over the pipeline surveillance security contract through the medium of cheap blackmail and unethical propaganda.
The organization called Tantita Security Services Ltd is today a global brand in the oil and gas industrial revolution in terms of guaranteed safety and security awareness for optimal productivity in the petroleum industry.
Tantita Security Services Ltd is making tremendous inroads into reducing gangsterism, drug abuse, pipeline vandalism, oil thefts and illegal oil bunkering and refining of oil without appropriate licences to do so.
These landmark achievements have brought about a growth-friendly environment for our teeming youths to freely express their God-given potentials to legitimate earnings to live a more fruitful life.
Youths hitherto engaged as ready and willing thugs by power-drunken moneybags and oil thieves to do all manner of unholy things are today gainfully employed across all divides in our Riverine communities and beyond.
Peaceful co-existence amongst the dominant dormant youths in the Niger-Delta Region has been fully and effectively enthroned for good.
In the year 2018 alone, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) reported over 60 production losses on TFP over operational breaches suggestive of ineffective and poor surveillance response strategies or modus operandi adopted by the pipeline security outfit handling the contract at the time.
The world at large needs to come to terms with a clearer understanding that the primary aim of the pipeline surveillance contract is to secure the critical oil and gas infrastructure amidst rampant illegal oil bunkering activities with the attendant regular pipeline integrity breaches.
The desire and urgent need to change the narrative in the midst of declining oil revenue into the federation account due to steady lapses on the management of the pipeline surveillance contract presented itself to the federal government.
In the year 2018, the federal government responded by awarding the pipeline surveillance security contract to a named contractor in the region.
What however played out subsequently in the course of executing the contract was a total and unbelievable fraud of the century. The scope of the 2018 pipeline surveillance security contract was across the Niger-Delta Region and beyond.
The 2018 pipeline surveillance security contract awarded by the Federal Government crisscrossed all the oil discharge and loading trunk lines within the southern region and traversed the northern regions of the country with huge sums of taxpayers’ money unaccounted for.
Persons were never employed from any of the Ijaw communities that abut these facilities to monitor and ensure their safety. Yet monies were paid out by NNPC and the Federal Government in trillions for settlement or payment of salaries of supposed surveillance workers on a monthly basis.
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None was on ground to do the job but money regularly went out to individual pockets. No one ever knew that a contract of such magnitude used as a conduit pipe to milk the nation dry overnight was in existence. Same was shrouded in complete secrecy.
The present sponsors of the campaign of calumny knew of this immense fraud but did nothing. They kept mute. They were possible beneficiaries and therefore could not have engaged in any form of protest as they regularly smiled to the banks.
The management of Tantita Security Services Ltd faced all manner of odds from the powers-that-be for attempting to make the pipeline surveillance contract as transparent as possible even at their personal-individual risk.
Today and against all odds, the modus operandi of the pipeline surveillance contract has been so transparently handled by Tantita Security Services Ltd that the benefits inherent in the contract translate directly to the people in the region and the nation at large.
The sharp downward slope of the distributable cash from the oil revenue accruals negatively affected the social and infrastructural needs of the nation called Nigeria.
Today, the story is totally different with the new blood of patriotism and hard work with less crave for unearned wealth introduced into managing the pipeline surveillance contract.
The management of Tantita Security Services Ltd strategically adopted the direct salary and allowances payment model to workers across ethnic lines engaged in its services.
This methodology has proven to be a veritable approach in the execution of the pipeline surveillance contract.
This formula obviated and by-passed the individual or ethnic-based coordinators who more often than not, collect monies on behalf of workers from their ethnic nationalities, without remitting the exact or appropriate amount to workers thus causing unnecessary issues hindering the smooth execution of the pipeline surveillance contract.
A good number of those agitating for the factionalisation of the contract along ethnic lines do not have what it takes to manage such a sensitive contract.
The results we see today is the patriotic and transparent execution of the pipeline surveillance contract by Tantita Security Services Ltd and nothing more.
CC:
1. H. E Governor Sheriff Oborevwori
2. The National Security Adviser
3. The Chief of Defence Staff
4. The Chief of Army Staff
5. The Chief of Naval Staff
6. The Inspector General of Police
7. The Director DSS/SSS
8. THE SGF
9. The Chief of Staff to the President
10. The Chairmen, Senate/Reps Committee on Niger Delta
11. The Chairman, House of Reps Committee on SSDC 12. Commissioners of Police, Delta, Ondo, Imo, Edo, Rivers and
Bayelsa States.
