Rear Admiral Mustapha Hassan, the FO Commanding Western Naval Command of the Nigerian Navy, has revealed that an unauthorized vessel apprehended a Ghanaian vessel with 13 crew members for suspected crude oil theft as part of Operation Delta Sanity. He claimed that the crew acknowledged taking part in the theft and disclosed their international Backers.
Additionally, the Nigerian Navy verified that the ship was traveling toward the Benin Republic at the time of its seizure. Motor Tanker SWEET MIRI is the name of the registered ship. The rapid deployment of Nigerian Navy Ships ABA and SOKOTO to intercept the vessel prevented the illegal purpose of the vessel, according to the Navy Maritime Domain Awareness.
He said in an interview with Channels TV, ”On this day we noticed a contact from about 120 kilometers and we dispatched two ships to round the person. Normally they put up all forms of IDs which raises our suspicion and this venture paid off and we found a vessel with about 2 million litres of crude.
The crew confessed to have stolen the crude and they pointed out that they had foreign backers. So we are doing our preliminary investigations now and we will hand over to the prosecuting authorities immediately we conclude.”
He went further to speak about the dynamics of Oil theft and how the perpetrators operate in the Nigerian waters, ”The thieves usually take advantage of these scattered assets and go steal at night. And that is the problem we are facing. There is a strong need to decommission these wellheads because they give incentives to thieves to always try and see what they can cut away.”
