An interest group, The Democratic Front (TDF), has described the reduction in crude oil theft from 108,000 barrels a day in 2022 to 5,000 barrels a day now as part of the President Bola Tinubu-led administration’s success story.
Chairman of the group, Malam Danjuma Muhammad, in a statement on Thursday, said that the feat announced by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) was monumental and a welcome development.
Muhammad said that the reduction was the fall-out of the reforms introduced by the Tinubu-led administration to boost Nigeria’s daily crude oil production,
“This awe-inspiring success is monumental in the history of the oil sector, given the devastating drain the criminal act of crude oil theft has constituted on the nation’s oil revenue and resources in the last two decades.
“We at the Democratic Front were, indeed, despondent and worried when an independent oil and gas industry report by Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) indicated that 7.68 million barrels of Nigeria’s crude oil were stolen in 2023 alone.
“More frustrating was the revelation in that report that the 2023 figure represented a 79 percent decline from the 36.69 million barrels of crude oil stolen in 2022,” he said.
Muhammad stated that the steady decline in annual crude oil production in the country in the last two decades had left Nigerians with the conclusion that the country was entrapped in an interminable circle of oil theft and racketeering.
“The persistent theft of crude oil kept Nigeria’s production output at a low level for almost 10 years – from 2014 to 2023, thereby forcing the economy into recession.
“However, the success recorded by the Tinubu administration in stopping the menace of crude oil theft has brought a new lease of life and a renewed hope for optimum productivity to the oil sector.
“The drastic reduction in the stealing of the country’s crude oil is a testimony to the success of President Tinubu’s reforms.
“It is a testimony to the government’s concerted efforts to restore a trend of higher daily crude oil production, which today stands at 1.7 million bpd from 798,542 bpd in May 2023,” he said.
The TDF chairman called on Nigerians to sustain their collective faith in the Tinubu leadership.
