Headline

Oil Theft: Tompolo Exposes IOCs, Security Officials, Oil Bunkerers

Published

3 years ago

October 8, 2022

…Uncovers 16 hidden tapping points on trans-Forcados/Ramos pipeline

Operatives of Tantita Security Services Limited, the surveillance outfit of ex-militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, have discovered major tapping points on the Trans-Forcados/Ramos Pipeline in Delta State, through which International Oil Companies, security officials, oil bunkerers, and locals colluded to bleed the country, over the years.

It was gathered that Tompolo discovered the breaches after the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, NNPCL, awarded him a pipeline surveillance contract, but he took time to investigate to find out those perpetrating the act.

His preliminary findings are top-secret information for the Chief of Defense Staff, CDS, General Lucky Irabor, and Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, NNPCL, Alhaji Mele Kyari, both of who flew in from Abuja to Delta state to inspect the several violations, yesterday.

NNPCL and security officials counted 16 breaches on the pipeline operated by Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, at Yokri community and environs in Delta state, on Friday.

The pipeline runs from Otumara and ends at Forcados Terminal, but oil thieves, oil companies, and security officials had been siphoning crude oil from the line for a long time.

General Irabor, who spoke to reporters after inspecting the breaches, vowed that the Ministry of Defence would not leave any stone unturned in fishing out the culprits.

He said the ministry would carry out an investigation on the entire stretch to find out those involved, “and how long it has been among other issues.”

Also speaking to reporters, NNPCL boss, Kyari, said, “First, the attachments on our Trans- Forcados/Ramos pipeline, which are illegal connections, were professionally done.”

“And the result is that they connected it to an inner case line which will never carry crude under normal circumstances and we have seen that this line flow all the way parallel with the other two active lines into the Forcados platform.”

On the next line of action, he asserted, “The CDS has said clearly that he would investigate, and anyone involved in this process, whether from the community members, community contractors, government security agencies, workers of the oil companies, including NNPCL and Shell will be dealt with.”

He acknowledged that the company was getting massive support from security agencies and other stakeholders in the campaign to stop illegal oil bunkering.

A top official of Tantita Security Services, Engr. Ketson Pondi, who spoke on the discovery, said: “We are at the Trans- Forcados/Ramos pipeline at Yokri Flow Station, the breaches occurred at different locations on the trans-Forcados/Ramos pipeline.

“Our operation has been on for six weeks and within this period, we have discovered 16 breaches. Of the 16 that we have excavated, we have intelligence on two that are further from where we are coming from and we are still excavating.

“We will follow the pipeline until we get to Ogidigben and Madangho communities. Therefore, only God knows how many breaches we are going to see as we proceed further. At this moment, we have discovered 16 points of breaches.

“Many people are complicit in this illegal oil activities, whether it is in the security sector, community sector, even in the oil industry, that is why Tompolo is coming in.

“If you know that you have been involved and nobody is doing anything, this is the time for you to evacuate. If you do not stop, the laws protecting,” he said.

Vanguard learned that Tantita operatives started their scrutiny on the pipeline from somewhere in Obotobo community, about a week and five days ago, and also found some illegal refineries, which they reported to the authorities to destroy.

“The pipeline is being terribly tapped, we have arrested nobody, and what we are doing now is to check the pipeline, if we discover illegal refineries, we report to the authorities for them to destroy them. If we also discover tapping as we have done now, we will also report it to the authorities.

“However, if we discover people doing illegal business and apprehend them, we will hand them over to the authorities, but from all indications, it is difficult to arrest those doing tapping, you can only do it with special intel. But having reported to the authorities, they will take their decision and possibly make an arrest.

“So far, we have checked about 50 percent of the pipeline but our responsibility is very clear, as we trot the line, we also make sure we put our security personnel on the line. Tantita Security Services provide intelligence and surveillance and we interface between the communities and the oil companies that have locations on the line.

“All lines are valves, when you put people on the line, it means that nobody should come to the place to open the valve to steal oil. With what we have discovered now, the operators, in this case, SPDC, has to come and clamp the line. Until they do that, our people will be there to ensure that nobody opens any valve to steal crude oil around that place,” a company official added.
VANGUARD

Headline

UK Police Hunt Asylum Seeker Mistakenly Freed For Sex Offence

Published

6 hours ago

October 25, 2025

Editor

UK police were still hunting Saturday for an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender whose crimes sparked a wave of anti-immigration protests and who was accidentally released from prison.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “appalled” by Friday’s “totally unacceptable” error that saw 38-year-old Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

“This man must be caught and deported for his crimes,” the UK leader added.

Kebatu had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service mistake occurred.

Kebatu’s high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

Justice Secretary David Lammy said late Friday night that Kebatu was “at large in London” after he was seen boarding a train to the capital in Chelmsford, eastern England.

Essex Police, which is leading the search with the help of London’s Metropolitan Police, said Saturday that “inquiries are continuing at pace this morning to locate and arrest” him.

“Officers worked throughout the night to track his movements, including scouring hours of CCTV footage,” the force added, noting “it is not lost on us that this situation is concerning to people”.

The Telegraph reported he was wrongly categorised as a prisoner due to be released on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told Sky News that “the justice system has let us down”.

Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

At the time, Kebatu was staying at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

Headline

UK Is A Home, Not Hotel, Kemi Badenoch Tells Immigrants, Starmer’s Govt

Published

2 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has slammed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government over its immigration policy, declaring that Britain is “a home, not a hotel.”

Badenoch accused Labour of weakening the country’s borders and enabling mass automatic citizenship.

In a 1:11-minute video posted on her official X account on Friday, Badenoch claimed Labour’s proposed reforms could allow up to two million immigrants to automatically qualify for British citizenship starting next year.

“From next year, two million immigrants can automatically claim British citizenship. Two million people! That’s nearly twice the population of Birmingham. That’s massive,” Badenoch said in the video.

Badenoch noted that the Conservative Party has introduced a deportation bill to bring immigration down.

NDLEA intercepts drugs hidden in snails, others meant for UK, US, DRC
Among the measures she endorsed in the video were deporting all foreign criminals, mandatory age checks, no more pretending to be kids, tougher visa rules and salary thresholds, disapplying the Human Rights Act to immigration cases, and no more abusing human rights laws to judge deportations. Make asylum support repayable, and no permanent right to stay in the UK if you’ve relied on benefits.

“Until that’s law, we won’t fix this. Labour should adopt it now. It’s time to get tough. That’s what the Conservatives’ Deportation Bill delivers, and we’re going to go further. Our country is a home, not a hotel. And if we don’t defend it, no one else will.”

In the caption that came with the video, she tweeted, “Labour has blocked every single measure we’ve put forward to cut immigration and stop abuse of the system.

“Now they’re pushing one half-arsed proposal — it’s weak; it won’t work. It’s time they stopped playing games and backed our Deportation Bill.”

Headline

King Charles To Pray With Pope Leo In Historic Vatican Visit

Published

3 days ago

October 23, 2025

Editor

King Charles III will on Thursday meet Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican and make history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with the pontiff for five centuries.

The 76-year-old monarch, who is the supreme governor of the Church of England, arrived in Rome on Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” state visit.

It will be Charles’s first meeting with Leo since the US-born pope took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Pope Francis.

The royals will arrive at the Apostolic Palace at 10.45am (0845 GMT) for private talks with the pope.

The king and queen will then join an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Pope Leo and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.

Broadcast live by Vatican media, it will be the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534.

Triggered by the pope’s refusal to annul the king’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch head of the separate Church of England.

Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, will be centred on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause championed by Charles.

It will bring together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that from Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.

– Schism –

The religious break between London and Rome remains, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.

In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.

The law was changed in 2013 so that marrying a Catholic would no longer disqualify someone from becoming monarch — although they still have to be a Protestant themselves.

The rapprochement is important because “Anglicanism was born in reaction to the Catholic Church, and therefore in opposition,” said Hyacinthe Destivelle, a French priest and member of the Vatican’s dicastery (department) for promoting Christian unity.

This is no longer the case, despite “theological differences in recent decades”, he told AFP.

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England — the mother church of the world’s 85-million-strong Anglican community — ordains women and allows priests to marry.

Sarah Mullally was recently named the first female archbishop of Canterbury, the Church’s top cleric, although she has yet to officially take up her post.

– Royal Confrater –

Charles and Queen Camilla are also set to take part in a service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, one of four major papal basilicas, which has historic links with the English crown.

The king will be made a “Royal Confrater” of the basilica and presented with a specially designed seat for use by him and future British monarchs.

Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death.

The king sent his son and heir, William, to the funeral and his brother, Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.

The visit comes as the Catholic Church celebrates the Jubilee, a year-long event held every 25 years, which has drawn millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.

It also comes at a delicate time for Charles, following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles. He had already stepped back from royal duties in 2019.

AFP