By Yusuf Danjuma Yunusa

The House of Representatives Special Committee on Crude Oil Theft has called for the establishment of a special court to fast-track the prosecution of crude oil thieves and other economic saboteurs, saying weak laws and delays in the judicial process have continued to undermine efforts to curb oil theft in Nigeria.

The proposal was made at a stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja on Thursday, where lawmakers, security agencies and officials from the Office of the National Security Adviser reviewed the country’s legal framework for tackling crude oil theft, pipeline vandalism and related offences.

The meeting forms part of the committee’s ongoing consultations on legislative and institutional measures to address crude oil theft, which has continued to reduce government revenue, cut oil production, discourage investment and threaten Nigeria’s energy security despite years of security operations.

Chairman of the committee, Alhassan Doguwa, said participants agreed on the need to review existing laws, arguing that many of the statutes governing the sector date back to the military era and no longer provide adequate deterrence against increasingly sophisticated criminal networks.

“We have also recommended in previous bills before the House the possibility of establishing a special court for these kinds of crimes because the crimes themselves are special.

“If we allow these criminal cases to go through the conventional court system, considering the delays involved, many of them will remain unresolved while the criminals escape appropriate punishment,” he said.

He said the committee and stakeholders had agreed to work together to address legal and institutional bottlenecks hampering the fight against crude oil theft.

“The global oil and gas economy is now in an advanced stage. Virtually all oil-producing countries are making progress because they have provided effective legal instruments to address their challenges. For this reason, we believe Nigeria should also review some of its laws,” he added.

Doguwa noted that courts are still relying on outdated legislation enacted during military rule to prosecute offences in the oil and gas sector.

“Unless we provide new measures, new laws and a new legal framework, the courts will continue to rely on this obsolete legislation in handling serious criminality within Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.

“I want to assure Nigerians that the National Assembly, especially the House of Representatives through this committee, will partner with the Office of the National Security Adviser to effectively combat crude oil theft and every other criminal activity within the oil and gas environment,” he added.

The lawmaker said Nigeria’s crude oil production remains below budget projections because of persistent theft and pipeline vandalism, stressing that reversing the trend is essential to improving government revenue and restoring investor confidence.

He noted that representatives of the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Navy, Nigerian Air Force, Nigeria Police Force and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps attended the meeting, describing inter-agency collaboration as critical to addressing the challenge.

Doguwa, however, criticised the absence of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission from the meeting, describing it as disappointing.

“It was rather unfortunate that some of the critical regulatory agencies in the oil and gas sector, particularly the NUPRC, neither attended nor sent representatives.

“We frown at that action and have directed the Clerk of the Committee to write to them, requiring them to appear before the committee because they are key stakeholders in the fight against this serious problem bedevilling our country,” he added.

A member of the committee, Cyril Hart, said the committee’s mandate extends beyond tackling crude oil theft to ensuring Nigeria’s oil assets are fully developed for national benefit.

He said operators that fail to develop oil blocks within stipulated timelines should also be held accountable.

Representing the National Security Adviser, the Director of Energy Security in the Office of the National Security Adviser, Goodluck Ilajufi, said stronger legislation had become necessary because existing penalties were no longer serving as effective deterrents.

By Yusuf Danjuma Yunusa

Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress ADC, Atiku Abubakar, has given President Bola Tinubu a seven-day ultimatum to order a transparent, comprehensive and independent investigation into the scandal rocking the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council PFIPC, warning that failure to do so would deepen public suspicion that powerful interests in government benefited from the alleged fraud.

Speaking through his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the former vice president said the controversy had moved beyond ordinary forgery allegations into a full-blown crisis of institutional credibility, and that many Nigerians seeking public sector appointments may have been duped through a racket that enjoyed official protection.

Atiku said the explanation offered by the Presidency through Bayo Onanuga did not add up and had left more questions than answers, questioning how one man could allegedly create an office for himself, secure office space within a government facility, meet with foreign embassy delegations, pay courtesy visits to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC, and process staff salaries through official channels without the knowledge of anyone in government.

“If the government wants Nigerians to believe that one man single-handedly created an office for himself, secured office space within a government facility, held meetings with foreign embassy delegations, paid courtesy visits to the EFCC, processed staff salaries through official channels, allegedly operated institutional accounts, and carried on all these activities without the knowledge, approval, negligence or collaboration of anyone within government, then that narrative raises even more troubling questions than it answers,” he said.

He said that while Adeniyi Adeyemi, the man at the centre of the scandal, must face the law if he committed fraud, the more pressing question was what kind of government system allowed such an elaborate operation to pass through budgetary, administrative, security and institutional channels undetected. “Haba. Nigerians cannot be asked to swallow such a story whole,” he said.

Atiku argued that the accused’s antecedents could not explain away the institutional processes he reportedly navigated, asking whether it was his character that secured budgetary allocations for a supposedly fictitious office, or his antecedents that got him office space within a government facility, or his dubious nature that enabled him to hold meetings with foreign delegations, legislators and public officials. “At some point, we must separate an individual’s alleged conduct from the institutional systems that either enabled it or failed to detect it,” he said.

He noted that public records had reportedly shown the PFIPC captured in the 2026 Appropriation Act with a budgetary allocation running into billions of naira, and that fresh reports indicating the Office of the Head of the Civil Service had allegedly approved the recruitment of over 300 personnel into the agency had changed the nature of the scandal.

According to him, budget preparation and civil service recruitment were structured processes involving multiple institutions and could not happen by accident.

Quoting the novelist Chinua Achebe, Atiku said a man asked to carry a basket of eggs does not break them all and then blame the road, insisting the Presidency could not continue blaming one man while declining to account for the official systems that gave life to the scandal.

He said the intervention of Prince Adeyemi, who has denied the allegations and claimed powerful figures are attempting to silence him, made an independent inquiry more urgent, adding that only a full investigation — not press statements — could establish the truth.

“Nigeria deserves the truth. Quietly investigating the matter and addressing the lapses would have been better than publicly presenting a story that collapses under its own contradictions. The President must order a comprehensive, independent investigation immediately. Anything short of that will amount to complicity by silence,” he said.

By Yusuf Danjuma Yunusa

Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, who allegedly paraded himself as the Director-General of the non-existent Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council and Presidential Economic Advisory Council, Thursday, denied any wrongdoing, insisting that Chief of Staff to the President, Mr Femi Gbajabiamila, was aware of his appointment. ExecutiveBranch

Adeyemi, who is facing allegations of impersonation and related offences, said the matter was already before a court and expressed confidence that he would be vindicated.

He spoke on Politics Today, a Channels TV programme, through a telephone interview. Asked whether he was running away from the law, he said: “Not at all.” Politics

Asked whether he was ready to face the law, he said: “Definitely, if I am wrong, let the court of law do that; if I am right, let the court of law do the right thing. Do you know what? Since the matter is in the court, let the court of competent jurisdiction vindicate me because I am ready to clear my name. Let the court take its course. Since my lawyers are involved, everybody will follow us, they will monitor the whole thing. Let the court of competent jurisdiction do the needful. I have a letter of appointment. However, since the matter is in the court, I won’t be able to say much about it, I am on medication. I am a bit down, I am sick.”

Asked whether he is a criminal, he said: “No, I am not a criminal. However, the court will do justice to that.”

On whether Gbajabiamila has knowledge about his appointment, he said: “Yes.”

On whether he got the confirmation of appointment through Gbajabiamila’s office, he said: “Yes, let the court vindicate all those things.”

On his message to Nigerians regarding the issue, he said: “I want Nigerians to know that, for one second, let us assume the agency does not exist, would I have the temerity, the audacity, to be going all over the country, meeting the head of ministry, department and agency, if I know that the agency does not exist, or as they allege me that I cooked up everything? No Nigerian can dare do that. I could not have summoned the courage to be going from one place to another for almost three years. Nigeria is not a banana republic.”