Lamenting the continued oil theft, Osifo blamed soldiers and other security agents protecting pipelines in the country for allowing it.

Osifo, therefore, called for the imprisonment of security officers assigned to protect pipelines from where humongous volumes of crude oil were being stolen daily, stressing that many oil companies were shutting down operations due to this development.

He added that international oil companies such as Agip, Total, Shell and Addax, had stopped oil production in some wells due to the theft, as the jobs of workers in these firms were currently threatened.

His words: “If after this rally there is no traceable progress, as an association, we may be forced to withdraw our workforce from the operating companies, because we cannot continuously send crude oil into the pipelines and at the end of the day the pipelines are vandalized by people who don’t know how the oil was produced.

“Some of these pipeline vandals, when you stop production into a line, they call our members and threaten them, asking our members why they stopped production into the line and that they should open the line.

“So, the lives of our members are even at risk. For someone to have your phone number and call you, that means the person knows you. Therefore, we can no longer condone this, government must sit up.”