PIPE LINES VANDALISATION: IMPLICATION ON THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

PIPE LINES VANDALISATION: IMPLICATION ON THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The Nigerian petroleum industry has been confronted by two sapping challenges over the years. The challenges relates to the prevalence of militancy and oil pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta.

While the former has significantly attenuated in the aftermath of the Amnesty deal in 2009 (Okoli, 2013), the latter appears to have escalated both in incidence and impact. According to Ogbeni:

A total of 16,083 pipeline breaks were recorded within the last 10 years adding that while 398 pipeline breaks representing 2.4 percent were due to ruptures, the activities of unpatriotic vandals accounted for 15, 685 breaks which translated to about 97.5 percent of the total number of cases (Ogbeni, 2012, para 8).

Indeed, the incidence of oil pipeline vandalism has been on the rise in Nigeria. According to the 2013 annual report of the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Nigeria lost a total of 10.9 billion US Dollars to oil theft between 2009 and 2011 (NEITI, 2013; Onoja, 2013). This loss adumbrates the significance of vandalism as a veritable problem in the Nigerian oil industry. The implication of oil pipeline vandalism vis-a-vis Nigeria’s security has been vividly demonstrated by its nexus with economic, environmental, and humanitarian losses and consequences (Onuoha, 2009). In effect, oil pipeline vandalism has been associated with consequences which hold negative implications for national issue of oil pipeline vandalism, in spite of its topical relevance, has not received adequate emphasis in the existing literature. Again, the bulk of the extant works in the area of inquiry has tended to be merely journalistic, bereft of analytical rigours and systematization. This has necessitated a systematic investigation into the problematique. This paper, therefore, an attempt is made to establish the relationship between oil pipeline vandalism and national security in Nigeria. The paper posits that oil pipeline vandalism results in untoward outcomes which threaten Nigeria’s national security. The discovery of crude oil in commercial quantity in Oloibiri in 1956 marked the birth of the petroleum industry in Niger.

PIPE LINES VANDALISATION: IMPLICATION ON THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA