Commander, 16 Brigade Garrison and Commander Sector 2 Land Component of the JTF South South Operation Delta Safe, Brigadier General Oluremi Obolo has stated that under him there’s no negotiating the nonnegotiable with oil robbers as troops intensified the crackdown on fleeing criminals at an illegal refinery site in Rivers community.
He told visiting Defence Correspondents in Bayelsa who were in the Niger Delta as part of a Defence Media Operations tour of the Joint Task Force of Operation Delta Safe area of responsibility.
He said despite the difficult terrain, the military had been able to make the area an unpleasant for oil thieves and other criminal elements to thrive.
Brigadier General Obolo who also spoke on some challenges being experienced in their area of operation promised that his troops would continuously step up the tempo of operation to end illegal bunkering and pipeline vandalism and forcing suspected criminals to abandon their stolen items and flee from the illegal sites for the overall good of the country.
Commander of the 16 Brigade Garrison, Lieutenant Colonel MS Kaigama, told a team of Defence correspondents on a visit to a once-busy illegal bunkering site at the abandoned Old Agip oil wellhead, known as Adibawa Well 8, in Edagberi community of Rivers State that the brigade garrison had continued to make life horrible for the dare-devils.
The visit was part of the Defence Media Operations tour of the JTF OPDS Area of Responsibility, aimed at equipping journalists with firsthand details of the military’s efforts at combating oil theft and environmental sabotage in the region.
Lt. Col Kaigama, said, “Before now, there were a lot of bunkering activities in this general area but we were able to constantly visit this place and make sure that there were no bunkering activities for some time”.
As the troops and reporters approached the site, suspected bunkerers reportedly fled the scene in panic dropping some of their equipment and stolen crude. The soldiers subsequently destroyed the illegal storage tanks and other materials used in siphoning crude oil.
“You could see somebody’s shoe because possibly he saw us, abandoned the shoe and ran away,” Kaigama said, pointing to one of the remnants left behind during the raid.
The military’s raids are in response to longstanding concerns over revenue leakages and environmental despoliation arising from illegal bunkering across oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta. But the commander noted that the offensive is not limited to the Edagberi site.
“We continue to come here and we frustrate them. This is not the only place. There are so many other places like this that we have been raiding to make sure that the bunkering activities are not taking place,” he said.
The overall terrain parades mangroves, long-winding creeks, marshlands, and dense forests posing significant challenges to troops but the media team witnessed the soldiers navigating the areas tracking and dismantling illegal bunkering networks.
“You could see the way we followed—it was a very difficult terrain to get here. But I can tell you that this is just one of the easiest places that we could access”, Lt. Col Kaigama noted, emphasizing the difficulty in reaching the remote hotspots.
During the visit, the Defence correspondents witnessed the destruction of several bunkering equipment after observing the series of methods employed by troops to identify, isolate, raid, and eliminate the flashpoints towards protecting critical national assets in the sprawling oil-rich region.
