Barrister Emmanuel Jakpa, lead legal consultant to High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, also known as “Tompolo,” the operators of Tantita Security Services Limited, declared on Tuesday in Warri that the oil pipeline surveillance contract awarded by the Federal Government to the company was not a proof of failure of governance in Nigeria.
Jakpa made the statement while reacting to comments credited to a group called the Academy of International Affairs, headed by one-time Minister of External Affairs, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi.
The Academy, comprising ex-ministers and ex-diplomats, had earlier in a statement called on the President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to terminate the oil pipeline security surveillance award to Tantita amidst insinuation that it was an exercise in futility to ask some of those suspects involved in the oil theft scandal to go round in search of illegal pipelines and oil criminals.
The Academy had also urged the Federal Government to institute a judicial board of inquiry into oil theft in Nigeria, covering crude oil and petroleum products, among others.
Jakpa, in his statement, however, posited that the comment by the Academy that the pipeline surveillance award to Tantita Security Services, a privately owned company, is somehow proof of the failure of governance “is misconceived and predicated on a faulty premise.”
“Will a judicial panel visit the creeks unaided and find the export lines by themselves?” Jakpa queried rhetorically, submitting that “the manner of argumentation by these distinguished academicians leaves so much to be desired.”
“It appears to be self-defeating,” he said.
Jakpa stated that the fundamental error in the analysis of the group and the consequent prognostication was the notion that awarding a pipeline surveillance contract to a private entity is itself a failure of governance and a slur on institutions like the armed forces.
