Investigative journalist ‘Fisayo Soyombo spent three months in 2024 embedding himself with illegal crude oil bunkerers, hoping to unravel the delicate network of oil thievery with entrenched roots in the South South and branches all over Africa’s largest producer of the resource. The expedition may have been abruptly terminated by an arrest at a crude oil bunkering site, but it had progressed enough to establish the complicity of the military and the police in terrestrial theft of crude oil.

Under the cover of darkness in Port Harcourt on Wednesday September 19, 2024, two completely different gentlemen — one laconic, the other garrulous — join me at the bar of a hotel in the city centre, to discuss ‘business’. We would be stealing crude oil, the bulwark of Nigeria’s economy, for onward loading to either Enugu or Kano where it would be sold for not just huge but instant profit. The meeting was brief, in fact shorter than the duration of the trip I made to consummate the appointment: we dispersed within 45 minutes of convening, meanwhile I had flown 1 hour and 10 minutes or thereabouts from Lagos.

This was all according to plan: the meeting was merely to set the tone, to ascertain my seriousness in investing in the business, to receive assurance of their competence to pull off the deal and, of course, to put a face to my name. It was the first and only time I ever saw one of them; the other, meanwhile, would become my ‘business partner’ for the next three months.

Reconvening on Thursday October 24, 2024 came with a slight personnel change. Nasiru had replaced the laconic fellow with Henry, a tall, handsome ex-footballer, ex-cultist and self-confessed ex-killer whose contacts in oil bunkering ran so deep he could organise crude theft with both eyes closed.

BUYERS OF STOLEN CRUDE ‘ALL OVER NIGERIA’

“If you load crude onto one truck, 50,000 litres of crude, you need a buyer. I have buyers in all of Nigeria,” Henry says with unflinching confidence, everyone more willing to spill this time. “I can link you. You may be headed to Enugu and I tell you ‘stop in Umuahia; I have a buyer for you’. All you need is ‘here’s my market, where’s your money’? You understand?”

Henry pauses for a while, gazes at me then Nasiru, downs a glass of alcohol, then resumes from where he stopped.

“Where do you want to sell? Enugu?” he asks rhetorically. “I have buyers in the whole Nigeria [sic]; I can link you. As long as it’s oil, there are buyers. Slush? There are buyers. Slope? There are buyers.”

It is unclear what Henry refers to as “slush”. It can be ‘slushing oil’, a semi-solid grease used as a protective, rust-preventive coating for metal surfaces, or ‘oil sludge’, a gel-like or tar-like deposit of contaminated, broken-down oil that can form in engines.

“There are buyers for any oil product, so if it’s about making your money, you will,” Henry continues, brimming with confidence. “All you need is to pray for the business to be successful.”

But this is a risky venture. What factors could possibly impede the success of the ‘business’? Henry identifies security agencies as the single biggest threat but assures me his “colleague” Nasiru “has the whole security” [sic] in his pocket.

“He works directly with the security,” Henry reiterates.

By “security”, Henry means the Nigerian Army, the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and a team from the office of the Inspector general of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, widely known in bunkering circles as the ‘IGP Squad’.

“Even at the loading points, nobody can dare Nasiru’s work because they know his connection,” says Henry. “The army, the IGP team and civil defence are the three security agencies that disturb [sic]; he has the army and the civil defence. But I can take care of the IGP’s team. If you want to load the product from here to Abuja, in terms of IGP, I give you 100% [sic].”

Really?

“IGP, the whole Nigeria [sic], I can clear that one,” he insists. “That’s my strength.”

FIJ subsequently established from multiple police sources that the police unit colloquially known as the ‘IGP Squad’ is indeed the Inspector-General of Police Special Task Force on Petroleum and Illegal Bunkering (IGP-STFPIB), a unit dedicated to combating oil theft, pipeline vandalism, and illegal bunkering activities. IGP Kayode Egbetokun restructured this team at about the time I was planning my first Port Harcourt trip, appointing Deputy Commissioner of Police Bayonle Sulaiman as the new Commanding Officer in July 2024.

During that announcement, Egbetokun also decried the significant threat of oil theft, pipeline vandalism and illegal bunkering to the environment, economy, and energy security, noting: “these illegal activities not only result in significant financial losses but also devastating environmental consequences, including oil spills, pollution and habitat destruction”.

AN EVERLASTING STRUGGLE

Tinubu signing his oil output-dependent ‘Budget of Restoration’
Nigeria has always struggled with maximising its immense crude oil wealth. A few months before Egbetokun’s announcement, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) had revealed a 7% drop in the average crude oil production from 1.32 million barrels per day (mbpd) in February 2024 to 1.23 million bpd in March, marking the second consecutive month-on-month decline after a two-year high of 1.43mbpd in January 2024.

In October 2025, the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) lamented that the Federal Government lost a total of 13.5 million barrels of crude oil worth $3.3 billion to theft and pipeline sabotage between 2023 and 2024. Meanwhile, an October 2025 report by the Fair Finance Nigeria (FFNG) coalition revealed that Nigeria lost about 619.7 million barrels of crude oil valued at $46.16 billion to theft between 2009 and 2020. The report, titled ‘Community Voices on Oil, Finance, and the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA): A Case Study of Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa States’, launched in Abuja, revealed the enabling industrial-scale crude oil theft by weak regulation, systemic corruption and the complicity of some security agencies and oil companies.

The consequences of these losses are damning. In 2024, for example, Nigeria failed to meet its oil production target of 1.78 million barrels per day, consequently hampering the government’s ability to finance its budget and worsening the country’s already atrocious debt profile. Meanwhile, President Bola Tinubu’s N47.90trn 2025 ‘budget of restoration’ is benchmarked against a base crude oil production assumption of 2.06mbpd!

THE MATHEMATICS OF BUNKERING

The conversation with Henry and Nasiru soon eases to the financials of the enterprise. Renting a truck to convey the stolen crude from Port Harcourt to Enugu would cost a minimum of N3 million under perfect conditions — a down payment of N1 million, an additional N1.5 million after stealing the crude, a final N500,000 after emptying it to the buyer. If we rented the truck but failed to lift the crude and return the truck within three days, I would incur demurrage that could eventually total N4 million to N6 million. I hoped for the best.

The ‘businessmen’ with access to crude lines from the pipeline planned to sell to us at N320/litre. This, multiplied by the 50,000-litre capacity of the truck, amounted to N16 million. Henry’s clients in Enugu were hoping to buy for N550/litre, amounting to N27.5 million and leaving us with a profit margin of N8.5 million under perfect conditions. If we ended up in Nsukka, sellers would take the crude for N600/litre, amounting to N30 million in costs and N8 million in profit.

“The problem with Abakaliki, they can say they don’t have cash,” Henry warns. “But Enugu always has. Abakaliki will tell you to park your truck [and wait while they go looking for cash]; this is risky, so it’s better to discharge in Enugu and collect your money.”

We fiddle with the idea of Kano as well. Kano promises far more mouthwatering profit than the already enticing Abakaliki. It also offers the prospect of establishing the entrenchment and ubiquity of the oil thieving network. The problem, though, is that the longer a truck travels on the road, the slimmer its chances of evading arrest. We abort it.

“If they load today and we move at 6am, by 2pm you’re already in Enugu. In fact, with a fast-moving truck, you can be in Enugu by 1pm,” Henry adds. “But once they return, everyone spends the next two days strategising. We may even reshuffle our workers. Everything is just about wisdom.”

Our interaction is interrupted by an incoming call to Nasiru’s phone. The caller, according to Henry, is “a superintendent of police”. “That’s not a small man,” he says, “and that’s to show he has security covered.”

We iron out a work plan. I had until 7am on Friday October 25 to confirm my intention to proceed. If I did, a truck would be secured to load crude from the pipeline on Friday or Saturday night.

I didn’t reach out to them for days. I first needed to go find N22 million.

FINDING N22 MILLION THAT COULD GO DOWN THE DRAIN

Finding N22 million was far from an impossible ask; the real problem was that the entire sum would go to waste unless the operation progressed to perfection. And even if it was successful, the costs of incidentals would surely be unrecoverable. It has happened before. When I tracked Arrows of God, an orphanage home that sold babies under the table to willing buyers, for 19 months between 2021 and 2023, the N2 million I paid to buy a four-month-old baby was never recovered for me by any institution — not the police, not the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), not the Lagos State Ministry of Youth and Social Development that is now in possession of the baby.

When I rang Nasiru in the first week of November to announce my readiness, he instructed me to pay N1 million as “proof of your seriousness” to nail down a truck. I made this payment on November 9, 2024, then hopped on the next available flight from Abuja to Port Harcourt.

NOVEMBER 13, 2024: ‘YOU CANNOT FOLLOW THE TRUCK’

Four days later, it is time to move. Nasiru rings me as dusk falls, asking me to meet up with him and Henry at Dream Plaza, Arabanko. There, a bunkerer by the name ‘Alhaji Mohammed Adamu’ was waiting. All three gobble monstrous molds of swallow and step it down with alcohol of varying brands as we start to strategise for the night. I opt for two wraps of garri and a bottle of Maltina.

I panic a little when Alhaji objects to my presence on the truck. Reason: his people would be uncomfortable with a strange face on the truck as they steal the crude. I plead my case, even subtly suggesting I would pull out of the deal if they wouldn’t let me in. “My brother tried something similar with Associated Gas Oil (AGO) in Delta. He trusted people with money without being physically present, and he was duped,” I argue. “I don’t want to suffer a similar fate. If I won’t be there, I’m afraid I’ll have to discontinue the deal.”

Alhaji reluctantly agrees. By then, the truck had arrived. I step out to inspect it. I do not know what to make of the engine but the body is long and big, just like its rotund owner Amanima Amamina, a well-built middle-aged man with a protruding belly. Amamina is fairly popular and respected in the community; he owns a chain of businesses, including a hotel, but I suspect his most lucrative source of livelihood is bunkering. He appears to possess deep contacts in the cartel and in security as well. Some of his trucks had been burnt by stubborn security agents in the past, but every single one they burnt he replaced; the business is that lucrative.

We set out from Arabanko at exactly 10:25pm; this was when I first noticed the truck crawled and would lose a racing contest with a snail. Well, I exaggerate.

The driver parks somewhere around Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals Limited at exactly 11:18pm. Nasiru and Henry abandon me there, climbing into their two-doors car with a promise to return whenever I got the green light to load. That never happened. After more than four hours of being mercilessly feasted upon by mosquitoes as I sat in the truck, we were told it was an ill-advised night to operate.

TRUCK PROBLEMS FOR THE UNION TO RESOLVE

The surroundings of our crude oil target

By November 18, we had encountered more pressing problems than mosquitoes. Amamina, whose truck we had secured since November 13, wanted more money. Nasiru had paid him N1.5m from my N2m deposit, but after five days Amamina determined that the payment had expired.

“You didn’t tell me you were planning to load at Pipeline,” he fumes. “[At] Pipeline, [there is] no mercy if you don’t ‘do your settlement well.’”

“If you want to go to Pipeline,” he continues, “give me a cheque of N50m and transfer another N10m to me.”

Henry howls in agony, Nasiru gnashes his teeth in disagreement. Still, Amamina would not budge.

“That money you gave me is gone,” he insists. “The truck has not been with me for five days. My diesel of 400L has been stolen; the truck’s tyres are deflated. Now that they have confessed that they want to go to Pipeline, they must give me N10m in cash and another N50m in cheque.”

Henry and Nasiru are vehement in their disagreement. Nasiru’s proposition is to forfeit only N500,000 of the N1.5m, and reuse the truck. The two-hour meeting with Amamina features shouting matches in swathes and ends up deadlocked. The pleading duo vow to table the matter before the ‘union’. A union of illegal crude oil bunkerers? That was a jarring discovery.

NOVEMBER 20-21, 2024: THE SECOND ATTEMPT

In the evening of November 18, 2024, Alhaji rings me to put me on the alert: if things pan out well we might work that night. He calls it “50-50”.

He rings again a few minutes past midnight, sounding more upbeat. But first, we have to settle some “friends” in the police and the army: N250,000. One hour later after I transferred the money to him, he rings back, downbeat this time. Although the security had cleared him to operate, a candlelight session in honour of a deceased is ongoing in the community we are to steal oil from. The bunkerers fear we cannot pull off the heist without attracting the mourners’ attention. His recommendation is to suspend it but he wants to know if I have the heart to risk it, provided I wouldn’t hold him responsible if we hit and missed. I reluctantly opt not to.

We do not get back on the road until exactly a week after our first trial. By then, Nasiru and Henry had secured a pact with Amamina: instead of the N10million he was demanding, they would pay him N1.5 million, but it would only become active on the first day of possible bunkering, and would be valid for the next four days. I made the payment to Amamina just before dusk on Monday November 18, 2024.

******* ********** *********

Not long after 9pm on Wednesday November 20, 2024, Alhaji Nasiru rings me to “prepare for work tonight”. Henry and Nasiru fetch me from my hotel much later and drop me off at Pipeline at exactly 12:03am on Thursday November 21. They wait an hour before emptying me into Alhaji Nasiru’s SUV. Alhaji and I then drive around for some minutes until he pulls over on Alese-Okirika Road, Refinery Junction, at 1:57am.

With Alhaji thinking we had overstayed on a spot and could have drawn suspicion, he proposes yet another switch of locations. He drives for another couple of minutes and pulls over on an unlighted road. When I plot the geolocation, my specialised device reveals we’re near ‘NNPC Port Harcourt Refinery’.

Alhaji Nasiru was going to help us steal oil from the NNPC Port Harcourt refinery, which explains why we were hovering around the area.

“The challenge we have these days is that there is increased security,” Alhaji blurts out. “Even companies are paying people to watch. Besides the security formations, we now have to evade civilian surveillance too.”

Alhaji continues: “Today, I even paid N150,000 to the supervisors of the civilian surveillance teams for them to replace the uncooperative civilian security on duty with the one who will cooperate with them. The supervisors will retain the ones who normally work with us, then post the uncooperative ones to other locations.

“This has to be limited to two people at most; the more people you involve, the higher the likelihood of getting exposed. And our DSS [not the Department of State Service] people watching over the line tonight are the ones who told us to wait.”

At exactly 3:18am, a phone call interrupts Alhaji. It is a helpful conversation.

“As I speak with you, I am outside being bitten by mosquitoes,” he tells the caller. “The last time we spoke, it was the DSS issue. Once they give us the green light, we’ll move. We’re outside waiting for them.

“When I was at Refinery Junction, I saw their Hilux move. I saw them when they returned to the Eleme area; that was roughly an hour ago.”

The call ends and I pick up from where Alhaji stopped. “You settled the DSS. What if the army disturb us?”

“No, no, no,” he retorts. “You know, the army, the ones working for the companies are different from the ones on anti-bunkering teams. They even have different barracks; some of them are from Eleme Barracks; some are from the 6 Div. However, any of them can arrest you. They know it is business, and they all have one eye on it.

What matters is that the ones guarding the lines allow you to load. Once you settle those ones, the IGP and the federal taskforce, you have no problem apart from the small checkpoints where you just give them their own ‘table money’ and you’re free. But the checkpoints won’t stop you because we use waybill to ‘cover the market.’”

“Waybill?” I ask, feigning ignorance to oil the conversation.

“Yes. We use company waybill. In fact, the waybill alone costs nearly N300,000.”

There is pin-drop silence, but it is only momentary as Alhaji, impatient to get the job done, breaks it.

“All that is stopping us is for our truck to be granted access,” he says. “Once that happens, we will be done in less than an hour. Then we move; and as we’re moving, we’re communicating. We give them their ‘table money’ and go. It’s normal procedure.”

At 3:35am, with Alhaji still unable to secure clearance, we know it is time to retire for the day. Normal human movement would resume within an hour — inadequate timeframe to stealing crude without notice and disappear out of town.

Nasiru and Henry received the news with fury. At this point, Aljahi Nasiru had taken a total of N1,850,000 from us, mostly as payments for settling “security” without managing to secure a slot for the operation. But there was a more important matter: the promise to Amamina to return his truck within three days of payment was now impossible to fulfill. Amamina was certain to demand his truck or more money, neither of which any of us was willing to part with. Only the Union could resolve this!

THE ‘UNION’ OF CRUDE OIL BUNKERERS

Nobody could say for certain how the meeting with the bunkerers’ union would end, but it definitely began on a bellicose note. Amamina was fuming; Nasiru was belligerent. Henry? He was seething.

Roughly 10 middle-aged men sit on two benches positioned against each other under a giant tree. Amamina sits on a chair in between them, his legs waggling. The previous day, Henry had spotted Amamina’s truck trudging out of town. Suspecting someone else must have hired it, he accelerated, overtook the truck and grounded it.

Nasiru is the first to go. He recalls how he had paid Amamina N1.5m the first time, followed by another N1.5m and then N200,000 for the truck over a 10-day period despite not having used the truck. Nasiru takes no responsibility for the delay, insisting his agreement with Alhaji Nasiru was to load crude in Obio-Akpor, before the plan shifted to Indorama (Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals Limited) and belatedly Pipeline. He is quick to also point out a three-day period when the driver was either unavailable or the truck faulty.

“A whole N3.2m gone for a project that hasn’t gone ahead? Not possible!” he screams.

Amamina says all the expected things: he had overextended himself for the bunkerers multiple times and couldn’t be blamed since he wasn’t their loader. It was at the forum I heard for the first time that he had in fact offered to help them load crude from the point onto the truck if they would pay him an extra N1 million. Instead, Nasiru and Henry were penny-pinching, negotiating for N200,000 — an amount he considered trifling.

“Am I a child? Why would I leave my family and spend a night out in the cold just for N200,000?” Amamina howls. “Ask them, haven’t they spent more than N1 million now without still loading?”

The ‘union’ chairman, an elderly man who inadvertently roared every time he spoke, found no fault with Amamina.

“Nobody, no matter how unfearful of God they are, can blame you in this matter,” ‘Alhaji’, as everyone addressed him, says. “You are our senior; you cook and we eat. All of them are your boys. Please, sir, I use my office to beg you, help them. Intervene in the work.”

Amamina softens after nearly two hours, promising to release his truck if we paid the costs of fixing the truck’s deflated tyres and replacing the stolen diesel. This amounted to N580,000.

Only after the group dispersed did Henry regain his arrogance. “He released it because he was afraid he would lose if the matter got to the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG). I’m a strong member but he isn’t,” he sensationally claims.

FINALLY, BUNKERING DAY

The earliest events of Tuesday signpost a successful night ahead. I am roused from sleep by a heartwarming call from Nasiru. His second call, at 11:49am, is the earliest anyone rang me to suggest we would ‘work’ in the night. I settle Amamina’s N580,000 demand at 12:15pm, and from then on, things start to progress at a frenetic pace. Henry encourages me to pack my belongings at the hotel, preparatory to checking out.

“Once we load, you will follow the truck to Enugu,” he instructs me. “But we will come back to the hotel to grab your bag.”

He stops by at the hotel just before 4pm to get introduced to the receptionist as the one designated to pick up my bags if I didn’t return that night.

******* ********** *********

It is 8pm and we have regained control of the truck. But first, we hobble into Nasiru’s car and head to a filthy neighbourhood filled with suspected bunkerers. I am there only on my own insistence, so they make sure I do not know the location. Our main host is ‘Biggie’ who, as the name implies, is heavily-constructed, with a bulging tummy and a stern mien, accentuated by his slight, unnatural limp. Biggie seemed to have more direct contacts to the lines than my friends; he, in fact, had another truck on loading standby for the night.

Most of their conversations are hushed, after which Nasiru drives to a hotel to spend time with his woman. Much later in the night, Henry instructs me to get half a million in cash for on-the-ground bribery before and after loading. At exactly 11:48pm, a N200,000 transfer is made on my behalf to an account belonging to Umar Bashir Yahuza, in exchange for cash via a PoS machine. The outstanding N300,000 gets transferred to him at exactly 12:22am on Wednesday November 27. With cash stuffed in our pockets, it is finally time to fetch Nasiru and go get our crude!

12AM, NOVEMBER 27, 2024

I start to believe nothing will derail us some minutes before 1am when we veer off a main road into a barricaded community, an indication of our proximity to the oil source. We are stopped by the vigilantes manning the entrance, but they grant us thoroughfare once Biggie disembarks from the truck to grease their palms. I plot the geolocation and it returns ‘Umusoya Road’. This was at exactly 1:13am.

I need Biggie back inside, but I also do not; he, one young man and I are cramming ourselves onto the only seat by the driver, supported by a makeshift stool in the centre. It is discomforting but I conceal the grimace on my face with the darkness of the hour, considering how I fought my way onto that truck against their advice. One word of complaint from me and it could finally spell my ejection from the truck.

The bus could not move when Biggie returned inside. According to the driver, it is the clutch. Considering this is past midnight, the noise from his failed efforts to accelerate the truck travels far and wide, rousing suspicion. Henry and Nasiru speed back to town to fetch their mechanic, but it is the young men from the community who arrive first, claiming any truck headed anywhere at that hour was surely going to lift crude. Their requests for ‘settlement’ are peaceful initially, but the gathering crowd soon starts getting belligerent and circling menacingly around the truck. Biggie again climbs down to engage them.

It was a big relief when the truck miraculously picked up after some 20 minutes and the journey resumed, but nobody knew what calls the disgruntled men had made or how far news of our presence had travelled. We arrive at the scene at exactly 1:42am.

PROTECTED BY THE ‘IGP SQUAD’

Although it was dark, I noticed we had made a u-turn at something that seemed like a roundabout, and the truck was to take a right turn into a bushpath just a few meters after. The men who had connected a big, long hose to the crude source instruct the driver to reverse into the path rather than drive in straight. But the truck wouldn’t reverse, the driver citing the same clutch problem. After more than 10 minutes of rotational motion, the truck still unable to reverse into the bushpath, the men at the crude point become apprehensive.

“What manner of truck is this?” one of them queries in pidgin. “You people will put us in trouble!”

It would soon be 2am, yet there was one more truck to be loaded after us. One, in fact, had loaded and vanished into the darkness of the night before us.

Those men soon begin to wonder if our truck should make way for the one scheduled to load after us. They give us a little more time but warn that if the mechanic does not arrive early enough to fix the truck while they pump the crude, the truck would be stuck in the bush, unable to leave.

The driver does manage to strenuously cover some metres in reverse mode, but even he soon gets fed up and disembarks to assess the distance left to cover. I join him. We are on this inward walk when I clock the screeching sound of a saloon car nearby. I take to my feet immediately, only returning after one of the loaders called out to assure me it was the ‘IGP squad’ and they were “working with us”.

Henry and Nasiru had told me about the ‘IGP Squad’ months back. They would provide us security cover by patrolling the area, and eventually “pin down” a few kilometers away from us. If the ‘IGP Squad’ noticed any movement by another security agency, then they would quickly arrest us, thereby rendering our arrest by the new security agency impossible. Being the first to arrest us, the ‘IGP Squad’ would then take us away, only to subsequently set us free when nobody was watching.

“These people want me to reverse up to 1km. Am I the pilot for the entire world? [sic]” the driver protests. “Is it easy to reverse all that distance?”

Amamina’s truck after the raid

Amamina’s cursed truck — the only reason we weren’t out of sight before the arrival of security

But one of the men at the loading point corrects him. “My brother, since the start of the rainy season, nobody has driven in front-facing, otherwise your tyres will get stuck trying to reverse out of the bush. We used Berger road, but due to ongoing construction works, that axis is currently well-lit. We had to abandon it.”

“Amanze,” he calls out. “Look at where you’ll reverse your truck to. See the hose that has been passed out from the point. See the pit already dug for you; see two hoses; we’re just waiting for your truck to get here. Nobody brought you here to waste your time.”

The driver had just entered the truck again when I heard vehicular movement, more intense this time. With nobody in sight to tell me if it was the IGP squad or not, I dash into the bush, ducking there for the next five minutes. When sounds of security boots furiously clasping against the floor rent the air, the danger becomes unmistakable. I lie flat in the thick bush, fish out my phone and ring my co-smugglers. They initially denied it but as it turned down, we had been busted by a combined team of security forces. The almighty ‘IGP Squad’ were nowhere to be found; they in fact were the first to take to their heels, leaving us — the bunkerers they were paid to protect — at the mercy of gun-toting military men.

Note: this investigative report was carried out by Fisayo Soyombo for FIJ.

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