Ijaw national leader, Chief Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, has called on the federal government of Nigeria to set up a team of judicial inquiry to investigate the criminal act of oil theft in the Niger Delta.
The Ijaw national leader lamented the marginalisation and neglect of the people of the Niger Delta in the country.
Clark made this call yesterday at a press briefing held at his Asokoro residence, Abuja.
He said, “My attention and that of the entire country have been drawn to the recent discovery of a large scale and sophisticated oil theft machinery going on at the deep swamps at Yokri, close to the Forcados terminal.
“Although the NNPCL thinks these have been going on in the past 20 years, some of us have always insisted that this oil theft has been going on for much longer, for about 50 years.
“In retrospect, my visit to Forcados oil terminal in the company of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, then as federal commissioner of Finance in 1972, while I was the commissioner for Finance of Mid-West State, was quite revealing. During that visit, we clearly observed that there were no proper accounts or records of what was exported through the Forcados terminal.
“The news that there is an illicit four kilometres pipeline, through which crude oil is being siphoned, goes to confirm what I have always said over the years, and what the leaders of the Niger Delta have been shouting about, that the issue of oil theft is being perpetuated by some mafia-like groups, with the connivance of some people in the oil industry, using sophisticated engineering methods to carry out their nefarious act.”
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