By Esther Onyegbula

A 28-year-old man has been arrested for  allegedly forging signatures of managers of MRS Oil and Gas Limited on the company’s vouchers, using same to load petroleum product from fuel depots on behalf of the company.

The suspect, identified as Abdulahi Mammud, was arrested with one Bashiru Yusuf, his errand boy, while at the verge of loading a 33,000-litre tanker with petroleum product.

Surprisingly, Mammud, who hails from Zamfara state, was discovered not to be a staff of MRS Oil and Gas Limited afterall. Rather, report said he ran errands for a staff in one of the branches whose identity was given as Yaya Suleiman.

Trouble reportedly started for Mammud last November, after the company discovered that six blank leaflets had been torn from one of its vouchers by unknown persons.

Crime Alert gathered that, consequently, managers at the company’s mega fuel stations were alerted. Unsuspecting Mammud was said to have taken one of the stolen vouchers to MRS mega station at Alapere, Ketu, with the intention of loading a 33,000-litre tanker. That was not to be as he was apprehended alongside Yusuf .

A staff of MRS who spoke to Crime Alert on condition of anonymity, explained that, “ordinarily, the voucher is meant to fill the extra tank of a truck conveying petroleum product to any part of the country. The quantity of the fuel is determined by the distance. But what Mamud did was to get extra blank vouchers which he used, filled and presented at our mega stations in order to be given fuel meant for our drivers.

“What he does is to liaise with truck drivers by filling their extra tanks with the stolen vouchers, only to sell the product to ready buyers.”

In this case, he gave Yusuf one of the vouchers which was used to fill the extra tank of a truck conveying petrol to Zamfara state. His intention was to sell the product to a ready buyer at Ogere, Ogun state.

While loading the extra tank, the manager demanded for the voucher, which turned out to be one of the missing ones. Unknown to them, the serial number of the stolen vouchers had been given to the managers in all our mega stations.

He escaped when it became apparent that the lid had blown, leaving Yusuf at the mercy of the Police, until he was arrested in his hideout in Ogun state by detectives from the Lagos State Criminal Investigative Department, SCID.

Suspect’s account

Confessing to the crime, Mammud said he only took three blank leaflets and not six as alleged.

Narrating his alleged involvement in the illicit act, he said: “I was lured into the act by a friend who works in another oil and gas company in Apapa. Severally, my friend (name withheld) has sent me to MRS Mega station in Alapere, Ketu, with forged fuel voucher to load fuel in the extra tanks of the trucks, which were later sold to ready buyers at cheaper rates.

“I kept assisting my friend in using forged vouchers from his company until I was caught in May, 2014. I was made to sign an undertaking that I would never use forge voucher to load product from that station again. But like a dog, I went back to my vomit my doing same in MRS.

“Nobody knew when I tore the blank voucher. Greed lured me into this.”

I never knew the voucher was fake. In defence, Yulsuf, who claimed to have known Mammud about a year ago at the Apapa Port Terminal, claimed he never knew the voucher given to him was fake. “I had no knowledge that the voucher he gave me was fake. He promised to give me some percentage if I succeeded in loading the fuel from the Mega station in Ketu. Unfortunately, I only succeeded in loading 350 litres before the fraud was discovered. Mammud has put me into trouble . I never envisaged I was going to spend the new year in the cell. What a shame!”

However, Crime Alert gathered that investigations are still on-going to determine the culpability of some staff of MRS in the crime and that the suspects would soon be charged to court.