Separating Emotion, Ethnicity, and Entitlement from Governance, Law, and Reality”
By Comrade Preye V. Tambou
Pipeline surveillance is not “common wealth”; it is a Federal security contract. The most dangerous lie repeated in this debate is the deliberate confusion between natural resource ownership and a Federal security service contract. Oil is owned by the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not by ethnic groups, communities, or regions. This is settled law under the Constitution and the Petroleum Industry Act. Pipeline surveillance is not profit-sharing, resource control, and compensation; it is a performance-based security service awarded to entities the Nigerian State believes possess operational reach, local intelligence networks, and the capacity to deter vandalism and theft. You do not share a security contract the way you share revenue allocation; you earn it by capacity, trust, and results. If guarding pipelines were “commonwealth,” then the Navy should share its budget with riverside communities and soldiers should share their salaries with villages near barracks – logic that collapses immediately.
Ethnic framing is not a justice argument; it is a political weapon. Turning this matter into Ijaw versus Urhobo versus Isoko versus Itsekiri is not liberation but divide-and-loot politics. Ask honestly: if an Urhobo-owned or Isoko-owned company wins a Federal security contract tomorrow, would the argument suddenly become “merit”? This outrage is selective, not principled. The same voices shouting today were silent when OMS handled surveillance, when PINL expanded operations, and when politically connected non-Ijaw firms received contracts. Justice that only awakens when one ethnic group succeeds is not justice; it is envy dressed as ideology.
The idea of “community guarding pipelines” is a security nightmare. It sounds attractive until one thinks like a State. Who coordinates intelligence across States? Who resolves inter-community disputes? Who is accountable when sabotage occurs? Who prevents pipelines from becoming bargaining chips? Pipeline vandalism is organized crime, not petty theft. Fragmenting surveillance into hundreds of community fiefdoms would militarize communities, encourage extortion, create parallel armed structures, and collapse national energy security. No serious country operates this way; security is centralized for a reason.
Wealth display is not evidence of criminality. Owning a Rolls-Royce is not proof of theft; spending dollars is not proof of corruption; hiring PR firms is not illegal. If lifestyle were evidence, politicians across Nigeria would be guilty . Instagram, Nollywood stars would have to explain their mansions, and past Governors would refund their convoys. If corruption exists, produce court-tested evidence, not gossip, screenshots, or “my source told me.” Nigeria is governed by law, not vibes.
Oil theft reduction is the metric that matters. Before Tantita and allied surveillance frameworks, Nigeria was losing hundreds of thousands of barrels daily, production fell below one million barrels per day, and the country was bleeding revenue. After surveillance reforms, output rebounded, theft routes were disrupted, and illegal bunkering became riskier. Is theft eliminated? No but security success is measured by reduction, not perfection. If the contract were useless, a revenue-obsessed Nigerian State would have cancelled it already.
Agitation is not automatically moral. History matters, but it must not be abused. Agitation birthed Amnesty and Amnesty reduced violence, but agitation is a tool, not a virtue. It can liberate or blackmail. When agitation shifts from “fix the system” to “cancel it if I am not in charge,” it stops being justice and becomes elite competition by protest. The loudest agitators on the matter today are not proposing transparent bidding frameworks, independent oversight, or performance audits; they are proposing cancellation or redistribution to themselves. That is not reform; it is a replacement.
The real conversation should be about strengthening oversight, publishing performance metrics, creating structured employment and training for Niger-Delta youths, and periodically reviewing contracts for efficiency. None of these require ethnic warfare, cancellation theatrics, international embarrassment campaigns, or burning down a working system because it is imperfect. Not every injustice is solved by cancellation, not every wealth display is theft, and not every successful Niger-Deltan is an enemy. A society that criminalizes structure and romanticizes chaos will never prosper. Reform failure, prosecute corruption, expand inclusion intelligently but destroying a security architecture without a viable alternative is reckless, and reckless revolutions always end with the poor paying the price.
There is deliberate intellectual fraud in weaponizing the phrase “collective wealth” against Tantita, Amnesty, and the Ijaw people. In any sane political economy, collective wealth refers to public revenue managed through constitutional institutions like Federal allocations, State budgets, derivation funds, statutory agencies, and elected offices accountable to the people. It does not refer to private contracts lawfully awarded by the Federal Government to registered companies, regardless of size. To insist otherwise collapses the distinction between State revenue and private enterprise, public office and private capacity, entitlement and performance. If every Federal contract in the Niger Delta must be reclassified as collective wealth, then construction firms handling Federal roads must surrender profits to communities, banks managing oil accounts must redistribute fees, and multinationals must share operational budgets – arguments no one makes because they know the logic is absurd.
Selective amnesia exposes bad faith. When pipeline surveillance was handled quietly for years by Ocean Marine Solutions under , there was no global petition, no ethnic outrage, no cry of collective wealth, and no moral panic about lifestyle. The pipelines still ran through the same communities and the money still came from the same Federal purse. The only thing that changed is the face of the contractor, and that alone reveals the dishonesty behind the current hysteria.
Benevolence is not an obligation. No ethnic group voted Tantita into office, no community elected it as government, and no constitutional provision mandates redistribution of a private contract. Any inclusion, subcontracting, youth engagement, or community participation extended is benevolence, not debt repayment yet, despite this, host communities across ethnic lines have been engaged, employment has been created where none existed, criminality has been reduced through lawful alternatives, and unemployed youths the State failed to absorb have been absorbed. Demonizing this as oppression is dishonest and ungrateful; those who feel shortchanged should interrogate their political leaders, not attack another man’s enterprise.
The Delta State contradiction exposes hypocrisy. If collective wealth were truly the concern, outrage would focus on State governance where power has rotated within narrow ethnic corridors, institutions are sited unevenly, and infrastructure reflects ethnic advantage. There was silence when multiple Governors emerged from the same group, when Ijaw areas remained underdeveloped, and when riverine projects were abandoned yet a private Ijaw-owned company executing a Federal contract suddenly becomes the problem.
Amnesty was purchased with blood, destroyed villages including my village Ayakoromo community in Burutu, lost generations, and military occupation of Ijaw lands. That struggle opened doors others walked through, yet the Ijaw did not monopolize Amnesty; others benefitted, trained, and received stipends. The claim that Ijaws are “cornering” what they bled for is historically dishonest.
The real discomfort is not about contracts but Ijaw assertiveness in economic space. Ijaws were acceptable as militants to crush, victims to pity, and voters to court but an Ijaw man running an effective, nationally relevant enterprise unsettles many, hence the rage, conspiracy theories, and attempts to internationalize falsehoods.
Criticism is legitimate, but ethnic hate is not. No leader is above scrutiny, no contract beyond audit, and no system perfect but criticism must be evidence-based, even-handed, and free of ethnic bitterness. When activism becomes a tool to dismantle others while shielding one’s own leaders, criminalize competence, and punish success, it ceases to be activism and becomes ethnic jingoism. The Ijaw people owe no apology for surviving, organizing, and succeeding, and history will remember who chose truth over envy.
Now, this debate must end where the truth begins. A nation cannot function on entitlement disguised as justice, nor can it survive on emotions elevated above law, performance, and national interest. Pipeline surveillance is not a cultural trophy, an ethnic inheritance, or a compensation scheme; it is a security instrument deployed by the State to protect collective survival. When people attack structure simply because they do not control it, they are not fighting injustice; they are sabotaging the very system that feeds the country. Nigeria does not need theatrics, ethnic score-settling, or performative outrage; it needs results, discipline, and institutions that work. Any society that dismantles effective systems to satisfy resentment will soon discover that chaos is impartial that punishes everyone. Reform what is imperfect, audit what is powerful, prosecute what is criminal, but never destroy what is functional without a superior alternative. That is not courage but cowardice. History is unforgiving to those who burn bridges before building roads, and when the smoke clears, it is always the poor who inhale the consequences. This is not a call for silence; it is a demand for maturity. Nigeria must choose governance over gossip, structure over sentiment, and nationhood over narrow identity or remain trapped in a cycle where envy masquerades as activism and self-destruction is renamed justice”.
