Nigerian pipeline security mogul Tompolo accused of abduction as contract tops $200 million

A group of young men in southern Nigeria have accused one of the country's most powerful private security contractors of abducting and beating them, showing their injuries on camera in a video published on Friday.

The accusations are against Government Oweizidei Ekpemupolo, universally known in Nigeria as Tompolo. They are untested. No court, police investigation or regulatory body has examined them, and he has not responded publicly to the video.

Ekpemupolo occupies an unusual position in Nigerian life. He is a former militant commander who spent years on a wanted list, accepted a government amnesty, and now runs the private company paid by the Nigerian state to protect the oil pipelines his movement once attacked.

That company, Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited, has held the federal pipeline surveillance contract since August 2022 at a reported 4 billion naira a month. Across four years the contracted total comes to 192 billion naira, above $200 million converted at exchange rates prevailing in each year, by Billionaires.Africa's calculation.

What the men say happened

The video was published by Sahara Reporters, a Nigerian investigative news site. It features men from Ijaghala, a community in Warri, an oil city in Delta State in the Niger Delta, the vast wetland region in southern Nigeria where almost all of the country's crude is produced.

In the footage they remove parts of their clothing to show bruises and marks. One points to injuries on his face and ear, saying he had never experienced anything like it and remained in shock. Another says they were instructed to tell people on social media that they had been invited rather than kidnapped.

"But who invited us? They invited us only to beat us and send us back," he said.

The men said they were warned they would be killed if they disclosed what happened. They appealed to President Bola Tinubu, who has led Nigeria since May 2023, and to state authorities to intervene. One said he feared being taken again if he returned home without making the matter public.

The petition to the president

The video accompanies an open letter to Tinubu from Apostle Perela Osia Daniel Ezekiel, who describes himself as a human rights advocate.

It alleges that Ekpemupolo operates four illegal private detention facilities at Oporoza, his home community in the creeks of Warri South-West, names four men it says run them, and lists individuals it claims were detained, released or died. It draws a historical comparison to wartime Europe.

The petition raises two legal questions directly. It asks whether any contract between the federal government and Tantita empowers the company to detain citizens across state lines, and under what provision of Nigeria's constitution a private citizen may operate prisons and take on the detention powers that belong to the police and the courts.

It also alleges that officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, a federal paramilitary agency, were seconded to Tantita and used to transport people in restraints. Ezekiel says he is willing to present himself for any official investigation.

Why the company matters

To understand why those questions carry weight, it helps to understand what Tantita does and how it came to exist.

Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer, and for two decades it has lost enormous volumes of crude to theft. Criminal groups tap into export pipelines running through the creeks, siphon oil into barges, and either refine it in makeshift camps or sell it offshore. The practice is known locally as bunkering. By September 2022 it had helped drive national production down to about 937,000 barrels a day, well below the country's OPEC quota and disastrous for a government that depends on oil for most of its foreign earnings.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company, the state oil firm, responded by hiring Ekpemupolo. His company was awarded a surveillance contract in August 2022 covering Delta, Ondo, Imo, Rivers and parts of Bayelsa states, worth a reported 48 billion naira a year.

The logic was uncomfortable but straightforward. Ekpemupolo had led the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, an armed group that attacked oil infrastructure in the 2000s to demand a greater share of oil revenue for the region. Nobody knew the creeks better. Tantita now employs former militants from the same waterways it patrols, an approach its executive director of technical operations, Warredi Enisouh, has described as carrot and stick, and works alongside the Navy, Army and police.

Its defenders point to the numbers. Production reached 1.6 million barrels a day within months and averaged 1.64 million through 2025. Tantita puts the cumulative saving to the Nigerian state at $11.52 billion. In April the National Assembly declared the company a national strategic interest, passed a vote of confidence in the contract and dismissed three petitions challenging it.

What the contract is worth

The dollar value has fallen sharply without the contract changing, because the naira has.

At the exchange rate when the deal was signed, roughly 430 naira to the dollar, 48 billion naira a year was worth about $112 million. Nigeria devalued its currency heavily in 2023 and 2024, and at today's rate of about 1,390 naira the same contract is worth roughly $34.5 million. The naira figure has not moved. Its dollar value has fallen by two thirds.

Even so, the sums involved are dwarfed by what the state oil company now spends on security overall. The African Democratic Congress, an opposition party, noted this month that NNPC's audited 2024 accounts record 7.13 trillion naira under energy security, rising to about 17.5 trillion once related fuel costs are counted. That is an increase of almost 14,800% on the 48 billion naira figure that once caused national argument.

The party's publicity secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, demanded disclosure of every energy security contract awarded since Tinubu took office, and made a further point. Ekpemupolo has become a prominent mobiliser for the president's 2027 re-election campaign.

That is what gives the petition its edge. It asks Tinubu to investigate a contractor working to return him to power.

The denials

Earlier reporting on the same petition found no support for its central claim.

Punch, a Nigerian daily, covered it on Thursday and said the allegations came without documentary evidence. It sent a correspondent to Oporoza, who reported seeing no detention facility beyond the local police station. Residents said they were unaware of any.

Chinedu Igbo, who commands the NSCDC in Delta State, said he had received no report of any private detention facility anywhere in the state. Bright Edafe, spokesman for the Delta State Police Command, said there was no record of any such incident.

Godspower Gbenekana, spokesman for Gbaramatu Kingdom, the traditional authority covering the area where Ekpemupolo is from, called the petition a smear campaign. He argued it made no operational sense, since Tantita works alongside agencies that already hold powers of arrest. The Ijaw Peoples Development Initiative, representing the region's largest ethnic group, rejected the claims as false and defamatory, noting that the names circulated are unsupported by police reports, medical records, court filings or complaints to Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission.

Ezekiel disclosed his own history with the man he is accusing. He told Punch that he and Ekpemupolo were close allies until January this year, when they fell out over Tantita's operations in neighbouring Bayelsa State.

Ekpemupolo's spokesman, Paul Bebenimibo, told Punch the company would not want to glamorise the claims. Neither he nor Tantita has commented on the video.

No investigation has been announced, and the presidency has not responded to the petition.