Tantita Security Limited has accused the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of attempting to frustrate its effort to rid the country of oil thefts.
The company, owned by former Commander of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, better known as Tompolo, has reacted to the arrest of one of its top officials.
The company’s head of its anti-illegal bunkering operations, and Director Operations and Technical, Capt Warredi Enisuoh, was picked up last Thursday.
Tantita is at the forefront of the campaign against the massive theft of the nation’s crude oil resources, leaving Enisuoh to play a pivotal role in the N48 billion pipeline surveillance contract in Lagos from January 19, 2023.
Reacting to Enisuoh’s arrest, Tompolo’s company warned EFCC to avoid being used by illegal oil dealers to stymie the fight against illegal bunkering.
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The company said, “On the 19th of January 2023, Tantita’s Executive Director Operations and Technical Capt. Warredi Enisuoh was invited by the EFCC and detained. He has been in EFCC custody since.
“All efforts to ensure his release have proved abortive, as the Commission has insisted that unless he provides names of his intelligence sources he would not be released.
“The company expresses concern that the EFCC’s move came in the heat of an ongoing operation to unravel one of the biggest oil-stealing cartels in the country.
“Capt Enisuoh, our ED Operations and Technical, flew straight from Port Harcourt (where he was coordinating the operations) to Lagos to heed the EFCC’s invitation and walked right into a trap.”
Furthermore, the company said its director is being targeted due to an ongoing legal tussle, for which a court of competent jurisdiction delivered a ruling in 2017.
“However as the war against oil thieves firmed up many of them have continued to threaten that those trying to stop their nefarious business would pay dearly for it.
“While Tantita is determined to carry on the fight against the oil thieves regardless, it is our position that the EFCC investigation, if genuine, can be carried out with minimal interference to the war on oil thieves and if not, it is clearly being used by powerful forces to scuttle the war on oil thieves.”