LAGOS – POLITICIANS and military leaders _ not militants _ are responsible for majority of the oil thefts in the Niger Delta, according to a U.S. diplomatic cable quoting an official and released by WikiLeaks.

The cable claims that a member of a government panel on troubles in the Niger Delta implicated Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, a general whose brother became president, and a former vice president as being the biggest forces behind the thefts.

Those thefts also fuel arms sales to the restive region while causing environmental damage and cutting production in a nation crucial to U.S. oil supplies.

The January 2009 cable quoted panel member, Mr. Tony Uranta as saying: “It is in the interests of these people to make it appear that the Niger Delta problem is intractable. As a result, they prop up the militants, including some who have an ideological basis for their actions.

However, former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, denied the allegations Monday.
He said in a statement to the Associated Press: “This is a recycled old tale told again and again by business rivals unable to match the business success. Atiku is unaware of any links that the late General Yar’Adua had with bunkering and he believed absolutely that this is false accusation.”

Military dictator

Yar’Adua, who served as second_in_command of the country’s military government in the late 1970s, died in prison in 1997 after being arrested for criticicing military dictator Sani Abacha. His brother, the President Umaru Yar’Adua, died in May 2010.

The diplomatic cable quotes Uranta as blaming “no more than 15 percent” of oil thefts on militants operating in the delta. Instead, politicians, retired admirals and generals and others in the country’s elite profit from the thefts.

Typically, thieves solder or cut into oil pipelines running through the mangrove swamps of the delta. Some refine the crude into kerosene or diesel in crude refineries, while other oil sails out to foreign ports for sale.

“Uranta claimed that the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, the president’s brother, had been the ‘biggest’ bunkerer,” the cable reads, using the local term for oil thieves.

When he died, his holdings were taken over by his brothers but managed on their behalf by his close personal friend, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.”

The large_scale theft, compounded by anger over unceasing poverty and pollution in the delta despite 50 years of oil production, led to an uprising of militants in the region beginning in 2006. Military_grade weapons funnelled into the region, turning gunrunners into militant leaders who espoused political ideas _ but kept their eyes on the profits from stolen oil.

While much of the violence calmed after a 2009 government_sponsored amnesty programme, oil thefts continue unabated in the region. Uranta also blamed retired military leaders for taking part in both oil theft and the arms trade. A February 2009 cable quoting Dimieri von Kemedi, a youth leader in the delta, also blames soldiers on the ground in the region.

Kemedi said: “The military wants to remain in the Niger Delta because they profit enormously from money charged for escorting illegally bunkered crude and from money extorted in the name of providing security on the roads. The … foot soldiers are not the only ones who profit; the commissioner of police, the director of the State Security Service (and) the military all line up at the governor’s door asking for ‘favours.’

The cables also suggested militants received foreign military training and that the Israeli military equipped and trained some government soldiers.