Senator Ned Nwoko, the Vice Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment, asserts that the military’s destruction of vessels involved in smuggling illegal goods and stolen crude oil is a deliberate attempt to hide evidence.
Nwoko, in his conversation with the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja, highlighted the irrationality of destroying potential evidence for crimes, unless those tasked with preventing the crimes were complicit and compromised.
In his view, there was no logical justification for crude oil pipeline vandalism and the destruction of vessels transporting illegal goods or stolen crude oil.
He said, ‘What is the point? It does not make any sense.’
‘You know, if somebody is found in possession of stolen goods, do you say, oh, the way to deal with this is to destroy it? No. You take it from them, you document it, you preserve it, you charge the culprits.’
‘And then you produce that in evidence against them in court and then ultimately return that product to the owner.’
The parliamentarian, who also holds a position on the Senate Committee for Upstream Petroleum, further elaborated that the military’s destruction of vessels apprehended for crude oil theft or lifting was solely driven by the need to eradicate evidence, indicating a state of compromise.
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‘Well, I think the military are complicit. You know the reason they do this is because some of them might have compromised.’
‘They have been bought over because to load this kind of commodity vessels- the crude – it takes weeks sometimes because of the size of the vessels, it takes time.’
‘So it’s not as if you just come one hour, you load it and then you run. So it takes time to get to the point of loading, and most of them are actually loaded from the official platforms.’
‘So who are those involved? Who are those managing those platforms? The oil companies, The producing companies, NNPC officials, the police, may be all of them are involved.’
‘You know what is common with these personnel, I mean the joint task force; within a very short period of time, they are all rich. They are all buying houses or buying cars or buying everything you know. So yeah, they have compromised.’
‘That is the only reason why I think they cannot wait for the vessels to be investigated, but rather destroy the evidence because they know it can lead to them. They destroy them, they burn them,’ Nwoko said.