Ribadu confirmed this when he led a presidential delegation to inspect oil and gas facilities at Owaza in Abia and Odogwa in Etche Local Government Area of Rivers on Saturday. He said the activities of oil thieves and pipeline vandals had impacted negatively on the nation’s economy and were partly responsible for the rising cost of living in the country.

Ribadu said: “It’s unfortunate that few individuals would steal our common resources, and in the process cause unbelievable loss to both the nation, communities and the people.

“Nigeria has the capacity to produce 2 million barrels of crude daily, but we are currently producing less than 1.6 million barrels due to theft and vandalism of pipelines. So, we are talking about 400,000 barrels of crude oil going to waste with few criminals and economic saboteurs not even getting much out of it. The value of 400,000 barrels of oil today is about 4 million dollars, and every day, we lose this amount because of this irresponsible behaviour. If you multiply 4 million dollars by 365 days (one year), you will see that it is a lot of money running into billions of dollars.”

HURIWA, in a media statement by the National Coordinator  Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, regretted that the current administration was more interested in media dramatisation about the critical issue of massive diversions of crude oil resources especially by a powerful cartel which allegedly included serving Naval and Army Generals as disclosed by two key figures involved with matters associated with the Niger Delta including Tompolo whose company hired by the Federal Government to catch crude oil thieves, had severally indicted the Nigerian Navy of involvement but without any actions been taken by the government to stem the tide.

HURIWA said there is high probability that certain powerful forces within the Nigerian Navy knows one or two things about these massive crude oil thefts so much so that it is now getting involved in shameful public spat with Tompolo-led effort to rid the nation’s waterways of crude oil thefts. The Rights group said in the first place, the widely acclaimed contract handed over to Mr. Government  Ekpemupolo otherwise known as Tompolo is clearly a vote of no confidence in the Navy which should have led to a clean sweep of all the officers implicated in the crime. But sadly, both the immediate past administration and the succeeding Tinubu government, showed and is showing disappointing attitudes towards concretely combating the increasing waves of crudeboil thefts in the Country.

HURIWA condemned the public show of shame by the Navy which has allegedly resorted to blackmailing the staff of Tompolo’s Security firm who initially exposed their indicted officers of involvement in the massive economic sabotage of Nigeria through active collaboration with the mafia implicated in the continuous thefts of Nigeria’s crude oil resources.

The Rights group has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to set up an independent judicial inquisition on the allegations of involvement of military officers in crude oil thefts and for the panel to uncover, lists out, name, shame, prosecute and jail these economic saboteurs for their crimes against Nigerian people or ‘is President Tinubu mortally afraid of wielding the big stick against military officers diverting massive crudeboil resources that belong to the Nigerian masses?”

HURIWA is also calling on Federal government to take steps to investigate the allegations made by Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited (TSL) against Nigerian Navy when it cleared the air over the incident at the Lekki area of Lagos involving its operatives and some Nigerian Navy personnel on August 29.