The Ijaw Patriotic League (IPL) has identified aggrieved oil thieves as persons bankrolling attacks on High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, aka, Tompolo following the pipeline contract awarded his company by the Federal Government.
IPL threw its weight behind Tompolo calling on the Federal Government to ignore calls by oil thieves to terminate the contract.
The National Coordinator of the IPL, Jasper Eritei, in a statement at the weekend described the decision of the Federal Government to engage the former leader of the Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) to assist in securing the nation’s outrageously violated pipelines as well thought out and in the public good.
He said: "The theft in the nation’s oil resources has assumed a startling dimension at a time the government is borrowing to run the country and should be rightly tackled as the government is doing.
"The massively wealthy criminals running the multi-billion naira oil theft rings will go through proxies to prevent any serious solution."
He insisted that the attacks on Tompolo should not surprise the government as oil thieves, who had deployed billions Naira on tankers and personnel, to criminally plunder the country’s oil resources would not back down without a fight.
The group wondered why out of five firms that were engaged by the government, only Tompolo's contract was a target of attack.