Nigeria lawmakers accuse presidency of incompetence over handling of oil theft

The House of Representatives on Thursday accused President Goodluck
Jonathan of doing too little to curb increasing oil theft, and said
the government's reluctance to deploy improved methods to end the
theft was tantamount to "economic sabotage".
A spokesperson for the House, Zakary Mohammed, said the government had
no explanation for not addressing the theft with new technologies
available, but choosing to offer excuses.
"As per oil theft, leadership is not all about excuses. It is all
about proffering solutions. I know that those that are involved in
this unpatriotic act are not ghosts… they are (all) human beings, and
government has the machinery to put it into goodwill and tackle oil
bunkerers in the oil theft thing," Mr. Mohammed told journalists on
Thursday.
"For us at the House, we fail to agree that oil theft cannot be
surmounted. We know that we have security operatives. Government has
been empowered on that. There are budgetary provisions made for that.
Mr. Mohammed, who was responding to a question about rising theft of
crude oil in the Niger Delta, said President Jonathan should not only
sit and watch, but should impose sanctions when necessary.
"It is laughable for us to begin to talk about oil theft at this time
and age because technology has moved in such a way that your pipelines
can be censored in such a way that, if there is any leakage anywhere,
or breakage, you will be alerted. We should move towards that. The
world has gone beyond policing by baton. But you can sit in one place
and still police so well with cameras. I think we should be more
innovative rather than this one-point-one-man thing.
"We believe that the alternatives, the openings (to end oil theft)
have not been explored enough to be able to tackle oil theft, and we
at the House, we see that as economic sabotage. We'd expect that the
relevant agencies step up to arrest oil theft. We are sick and tired
of people talking about oil theft, oil theft… as if it is ghosts that
are doing it. We should go beyond that.
"Who's benefiting from that (oil theft)? Where's the market for the
oil theft? We should begin to work as a government to discourage that
because, if we work that hard, I'm sure that we should find solutions,
and we'll be saving this country a lot of money that would be planned
back to addressing our infrastructural deficits."