Oil theft: Merchant Navy indicts SGF’s office

The Merchant Navy has in a petition to President Goodluck Jonathan implicated the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) in illegal bunkering activities. The illicit trade has since been reported to cost the country an average of $5 billion in revenue every year, as annual national budgets continue to suffer huge deficits as a result of such revenue leakages. One of the copies of the petition signed by the Commandant, Nigerian Merchant Navy Corps, Commodore Allen Benson Edema, would also be laid before the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum (upstream), currently probing the crude oil theft in the Niger Delta.

Indicted in the petition made available to Sunday Mirror at the weekend, is a Deputy Director, Liaison, in the SGF’s office, Mrs. Yemisi Kefas.

The petition against Mrs. Kefas alleges that the top government official used a Head of Service building in Lagos for the illegal oil bunkering business.

The Merchant Navy, according to the petition, allegedly discovered that, “One Mr. Uba and others were using two of the office rooms at the back of the Head of Service building in Lagos for oil bunkering business, his warehouse and fuel storage store.

“When he was interrogated, he said the oil bunkering business belongs to Mrs. Yemisi Kefas, while Mr. Uba is a distributor who supplied diesel and petrol oil to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF)”.

In his petition to the Presidency, dated July 10, 2012, Commodore Edema also alleged that because of the oil bunkering charge, Mrs. Kefas led a team of armed Naval officers and other security personnel to eject the Merchant Navy from their offices four years ago.

His words: “On May 2008, the same Mrs. Yemisi Kefas personally led groups of Nigerian Navy officials headed by a commodore from the Nigerian Navy Base, NNS Beecroft Apapa. They came in two full HILUX vans boldly written ‘NAVAL POLICE’ and one 504 Peugeot car with registration number NN 275 AO2 and drove into the premises.

“The officers and men were fully equipped and armed, while Mrs. Yemisi Kefas, Mr. Balogun and Mr. Salako came with one 406 car with registration number FG 163 AOZ and one black Toyota Camry car which two number plates were covered.

“Mrs. Yemisi Kefas passed the instruction to evade the office and arrest all officers and ratings of the Nigerian Merchant Navy Seafarers Maritime & Petroleum Security and Safety Corps to the Navy Base, NNS Beecroft. They seized and confiscated all our property”.

Edema also recalled that in 2008, Mrs. Kefas ordered security men to harass him when he earlier visited SGF’s office with the “facts” of his oil bunkering allegation.

“Two days later (on May 8, 2008), I went to the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe. I was right in his waiting visitors’ room on the 7th floor, Federal Secretariat Complex, at about 10:30 a.m. when Mrs. Yemi Kefas came into the visiting room accompanied by one other woman.

“As soon as she saw me, she immediately called on the policemen and the State Security Service (SSS) officials attached to the office of the SGF to bring me and other two officers out of the office and they accompanied me to the last floor of the complex,” he added.

Source: National Mirror