Obi links govt officials to oil theft, seeks total overhaul of security architecture

Presidential Candidate of Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi, has called for a total overhaul of the nation’s security architecture to achieve sustainable economic growth.

He also linked some top government officials to the huge oil theft in Nigeria, lamenting that the inability of the Muhammadu Buhari administration to curtail the high network crime which he claimed cost the country N2.7 trillion in two months (July and August).

Obi, who stated this at the Lagos Chamber of Commerce (LCCI) Private Sector Economic Forum on the 2023 Presidential election in Lagos on Monday, described Nigeria as a failed state that is begging to be rescued.

He said, “On the issue of insecurity, let me tell you, whoever comes into government in 2023, one thing we must decisively and aggressively deal with is the issue of security.

“Insecurity is the number one thing that is impacting Nigeria’z economic growth today and we need to deal with it as quickly as possible and am assuring you, when am saying I am going to be in charge during my administration, we will deal with it decisively and head on.

“Insecurity, people will say how are you going to deal with it? Yes, you need to overhaul the entire security architecture in the country.

“Ensure that it is put in place aggressively, including having multiple-level policing; federal, states and community.

“Equip the public and provide them with modern gadgets. You cannot tell me today that anybody can say that somebody is kidnapped, kept somewhere and they are using phones to exchange calls with his family members in this time and age.

“If he is sick, they even invite doctor to go and treat him, and police will say they didn’t know where they are? I am not going to take that for one day in my government. “Go and check with what I did with the security in Anambra state. Go and ask people.

“We provided every community with vehicles; new vehicles and gadgets for security purposes. No state in Nigeria has done that. I can assure you, we will do exactly that come 2023 with our government in place because at the heart of what we are going through today is security and it must be decisively death with holistically.”

He also said the oil theft in the country was politically motivated and a failure of political will by the current government to stop it because some insiders in the government are benefiting, including security agencies. Obi said, “When it comes to the issue of oil theft, I have said it before; there is no way under my watch we will not find solution to oil theft in this country.

“It is possible. Look at the oil theft at a time we critically need every single resources. In July, we were the only country in the world that did not meet up with our OPEC production except Venezuela, because of hardships.

“At the beginning of July, our oil production was 1.83mmbpd. Whereas, same July, we had 700,000mbpd shortage. Then when you multiply it by 31 days, it is 22.2mmbpd that we lost to oil theft and the average trading of oil in July was $110.

“So, we lost $2.45 billion in revenue in one month. If you multiply $2.45 billion by N550 official exchange rate, it will give you N1.34 trillion and we are still owing ASUU N1.3 trillion of ther severance packages. “One month of stealing. In the month of August, it became even worse. Our oil supply in the month of August went down to 975,000bpd.”