Peter Obi alleges plot to arrest, detain him

Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, has raised the alarm, says there a grand plot to arrest and put him in detention ahead of the 2023 elections, for speaking out against crude oil theft in Nigeria.

He raised the alarm while speaking during an interactive session of an event orgnised by Oxford Africa Society, the umbrella body for all African students at the University of Oxford.

Obi, who spoke on “Trends and Prospects of Nigeria’s Economy: Broader implications For Africa’s Development”, said the ultimate plan was to silence him from talking about the menace of crude oil theft in Nigeria.

He has previously accused people in the government of colluding with external influence to steal the country’s crude oil, stressing that there is no way crude oil could be stolen from Nigeria, without the authorities knowing about it.

Obi said at the event held on Friday, “I have said it everywhere that oil in Nigeria is being stolen by people in the government. Nobody can steal oil; it is not sweet; you can go into a grocery shop and steal something and put it in your pocket and go away; you can’t steal oil like that.

“For you to steal oil, a ship has to come into your territorial waters, load the oil and no ship can go into a nation’s territorial waters without the approval of its Navy. When you load it, for you to leave, you have to have approval. And everybody knows where every ship is on the surface of the earth. It is something that is recorded.

“So, if somebody is able to take away oil, there is high-level connivance between external and internal people who have organized for the oil to leave; and you can even trace the oil to where it is offloaded. So, it is not an easy thing to steal. It can only be done officially and that is it.”

He also said, “Again, it is worrisome because if you think of the amount of money that we are losing; when we need; again, look at our exchange rate; when we need every dime, we are losing a huge amount of money, even when all the monies won’t come to us. I always tell people about what happened in July and August, we are operating a high-level of budgetary deficit.

“Between January 1st of this year and about 30th of April, first four months, our revenue was in the region of about 1.6 trillion and we say expenditure was about 4.7 trillion. So, we had a deficit of almost 3.13 trillion in terms of Naira. But in two months, we lost almost 2.83 trillion.

“In July, our oil production was on average 1,083,000. Our quota is 1.8 million. So, every day we lost 717,000 barrels. That is what we didn’t produce. So, if you check it in one month, it was about 22,227,000. At the average price of 110 dollars in July it was 2,445,000,000 dollars. If you multiply that with 550, I do not want to use the official rate, it gives you about 1,344,750,000,000. That is what we lost in one month in July.

“In August, that situation was worst. We were producing 975,000. We were losing 825,000 every day. Multiply by another one month, we lost about 25 million barrels in August. At average price of 100 dollars, its 2.5 billion dollars. Again, multiply by 555, its about 1.4 trillion.

“So, if you put these two together in two months, you lost about 2.8 trillion. You had a deficit of about 3.1 trillion in four months. Aggressively, we are supposed to pursue this and considering that we need every dollar now.

“That is why I said its official stealing. Because if it is not official stealing, we have 200 million in population. We have about 60% youth unemployment, which is about 20 million youths, who don’t know where the next meal will come from; is it not pipeline, we go and stand everybody on the line there, and make sure that nobody takes one barrel of it. I am prepared to go and stand on the line; all of us because this is the only resources we have.

“But because people who are in government, they are stealing it, they will not want to. And when you say it, everybody is looking for where to put Peter Obi in detention; this man is causing trouble. Since we know this thing is missing, let all of us go and man the pipeline. Is it not pipeline? If we stand there, who will take it? They don’t want us to do it because people know those who are taking it.”