Since Nigeria discovered crude oil in commercial quantities in Oloibiri in today’s Bayelsa State in the early 50’s, the country’s life has depended largely on what has come to be known as black gold. Indeed, the sustenance, survival and growth of her economy and peoples today is determined by foreign exchange earnings from exports of crude and sale of its refined products to the people.
Crude oil has a history of annexure with impunity, and of systemic denial of peoples of the areas it was sourced. Infact, a visit to Oloibiri would force the first timer to shudder if indeed the product is a curse to the people or blessing only to others, not the people.
That systemic marginalisation, manifested profoundly in the infrastructural decay of host communities and the flamboyance of oil company workers, mostly multi-nationals whose houseboats, were the  first source of electricity light, in the usually dark horizon of the once peaceful fishing villages.
With the high economic power of such foreigners, as against the abysmally woeful purchasing power of the locals, the girl became an easy prey to red-eyed multi-nationals who on  a near-frequent basis, mindlessly induced the vulnerable lot into early prostitution, while productive young people became their reluctant pimps, escorts or ferry canoe-men for their escapades into the interiors.
But the desecration of the once self-content oil bearing areas was not limited to the socio-economic front. The environmental impact was very huge and indeed threatened the only occupations the people knew, fishing, farming, basket weaving, canoe making and the like. The usually green vegetations turned black as they were totally polluted, resulting in lifeless rivers, farm lands, unfit for fishing and farming, even as the wells, which the locals depended on for drinking water, turned brown.
If the socio-economic and environmental factors were demeaning and made peoples of the oil bearing communities second-class citizens, in their own country, their denial of political space was even more frustrating. Being minorities, it required a thoughtful majority to grant them political space to push the protest, but same was denied even before they were made.
That was on account of a pre-reached resolution by those majority tribes expected to do right. That resolution simply tagged oil as A Gift from God. To whom? A natural treasure.  Whose? Hence unbefitting of the special place Agricultural success enjoyed.
Merely because, being majority, those who lacked the said natural and later national gift said so, oil producing areas were willfully denied control of the God given land’s resources as was the case in the days of the groundnut pyramids, cocoa and all. From between 50 percent and 100 percent enjoyed, derivation to oil producing areas, crawled from zero percent, one and half percent, 3 percent, 5 percent and today 13 per cent.
Of course, these were not without protests. Infact, it was when all civil protests made by the people, attracted from the powers that be, the usual response, ‘something is in the pipeline’ that the thoroughly suffocated youth went, in search of the content of the pipelines, directly aggravated also by their systemic denial of sources of livelihood.
Of course, no slave driver willingly frees a good slave without a fight, and so the federal authorities kicked. It was the resultant threat which that face-off posed to the easy sucking of the crude for export and survival of the nation that hastened amnesty for Niger Delta militants.
This brief background has become necessary because of fresh calls to include, oil theft among offences that must attract capital punishment. The question being, can one steal something that belongs to none? A gift from God to all? Like the Air? If there indeed are armed oil thieves, is it not safe to say, that the federal government that forcefully converted a people’s land’s natural gift to a national inheritance are the first culprits?
Without such military might (armed) could the federal government forcefully take what it did not own? (robbery). Were the peoples of the Niger Delta, given the opportunity to decide whether they wished to be a part of the forced amalgamation called Nigeria and for which crude-oil sourced there-from must be for all? Is Nigeria willing to pop that question to the oil bearing communities? To know, if they would wish to surrender their heritage in a Sovereign National Conference?
Last week, Nigeria’s Senate President David Mark canvassed death penalty as punishment for oil theft, due to the damaging effects of the crime to the nation’s survival.
In canvassing capital punishment for crude oil thieves, the key consideration is the threat which the practice poses to the economy of Nigeria, not the marginalisation it’s exploitation and sale had caused to the people whose farmlands and rivers remain the drilling fields with attendant woes. To make oil theft a capital offence therefore, the treasure should first be given to its owners, who alone should complain of the theft of their inheritance and backed by the central government.
What lack of patriotism? I can imagine many wondering. Fact is, wrong as oil theft may be, making it an offence that will attract death penalty is over-widening the nation’s killing fields, and there’s no telling how many Nigerians would be innocent.
Theft or armed robbery flourishes partly because there are willing patrons of the loot the thieve brings. Armed robbery is expensive, so a starter requires a criminally minded rich sponsor for arms. Like armed robbery, crude oil theft is a multi-dimensional crime that covers many skilled and unskilled participants in the banking sector, government, the security forces, multi-nationals, the local refinery owner called ‘kpo-fire,’ the rural trader buying and selling the product, the oil company staff willing to compromise trust for extra earnings, the marketer who mixes adulterated products, the NNPC staff detailed to the discharge point, the tanker driver who sells some drums on the way,  and indeed the unemployed youth forgotten by his country, seeking a livelihood, the hard way.
Such is the chain. Such, the number of those likely to be affected. The difference between armed robbery and oil theft however, is that, in the case of the latter, it has always been perceived as a stolen property which when restolen constitutes no offence. This is perhaps why those involved believe that they are merely taking a bit of what has been forcefully made a general gift for all.
Therefore, it will require more than imposition of death penalty to change that mindset. It will require a total remediation of the Niger Delta environment, an acceptance of guilt by the federal government, and  an agreement that the product belongs to the owners of the land and rivers the gift was sourced, based on global law who alone should determine what percentage to share or pay in taxes. It is when that ownership is established based on natural law, that an oil thief should be killed for forcefully taking what belongs to another. That too, has a caveat.
The crime must result in the death of the owner to attract the death penalty. Except in very few instances, such is the key ingredient that defines capital punishment in the United States of America (USA) whose democracy we’ve copied.
Perhaps a cursory look at offences that fit the redline will help. (additional facts from the web)
The following are offences that attract either death penalty or life imprisonment in the US
. Causing death by using a chemical weapon
.killing a member of Congress, the Cabinet or the United States Supreme Court
.Kidnapping a member of Congress, Cabinet of the United States Supreme Court resulting in death
.Conspiracy to kill a member of the Congress, Cabinet of the US Supreme Court resulting in death
.Causing death by using an explosive
.Causing death by using an illegal firearm
.Genocide
.First Degree Murder
.Murder perpetrated by poison or lying wait
.Murder that is willful, deliberate, malicious and premeditated
.Murder in the perpetration of or  in the attempt to perpetrate any arson, escape kidnapping, treason, espionage, sabotage, aggravated sexual abuse or sexual abuse, child abuse, burglary or robbery
. Murder perpetrated as part of a pattern or practice of assault or torture against a child or children
.Murder  committed by a federal prisoner or an escaped federal prisoner sentenced to 15 years to life or a more severe penalty
.Assassinating the President or member of his staff
.Kidnapping the President or a member of his staff resulting in death
.Killing persons aiding federal investigation or state correctional officers
.Sexual abuse resulting in death
.Sexual exploitation of children resulting in death.
.Torture resulting in death
.War crimes resulting in death
.Crimes against humanity
.Attempting, authorising or advising the killing of any officer, juror, or witness in cases involving continuing criminal enterprise, even if such killing  does not occur.
Thus, as it may be that a country’s laws are depended largely on its peculiar problems, frustrations, needs, experiences, hopes and fears, and oil theft a major crime against our economy, the offence does not require a capital punishment or a separate law to tackle. The country’s criminal code provides for ways and means of checking theft and robbery, and attracts a death penalty if that crime results in the death of another.
What is required instead is proper policing of our oil and gas production infrastructure by competent, patriotic and indeed God fearing security operatives.
My Agony is that the first victims of such law would be the unemployed youth daily engaged to locally refine crude oil and not all others in the chain that make the theft possible. Or do you not know that the oil thieves and security men posted to such red zones may not be best of friends, but are never enemies in combat, except when the thief is greedy, the security, too pious. And they are few.