By Jude Dike, PhD
There is a strange thing happening in Nigeria.
The country is finally producing more oil.
The thieves are stealing less of it.
The pipelines that once looked like invitations to an open-air oil bazaar are becoming harder to tap.
And yet, somewhere inside the balance sheet of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, there is a number so large that it should make every Nigerian stop scrolling. ₦11.2 trillion.
Not a typo. Not a budget headline. Not another fuel-subsidy number. A number sitting inside the financial relationship between Nigeria’s oil company and the Federation.
And here is the part nobody is saying loudly enough:
Nigeria may have found a way to protect more of its oil. But it has not yet answered the question of what it costs to protect the oil, and whether the country is getting enough economic value for every naira spent.
That is the question behind this week’s ‘What Nobody Is Saying.’
Because after the missing ledger behind fuel subsidy removal, after asking why a country sitting on enormous natural wealth can still produce poor citizens, after examining whether Nigerians could finally own a piece of the machine producing their wealth through the Dangote IPO, and after asking who is really paying for an economy running on borrowed money, the next ledger is sitting in plain sight.
The security ledger. And it is enormous.
First, let us get the ₦11.2 trillion story right
The number now circulating in public debate comes from NNPC Limited’s audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2025.
NNPC’s own investor-relations page confirms that the company’s 2025 audited financial statements have been published. The company reported ₦34.5 trillion in revenue, ₦7.2 trillion in profit after tax and ₦12.8 trillion in operating cash flow for 2025.
But there is an important accounting distinction.
The ₦11.2 trillion should not be described as ₦11.2 trillion paid to Tantita Security Services or even as ₦11.2 trillion of fresh security spending in 2025.
The accounts describe amounts recoverable from the Federation, including advances and costs incurred by NNPC under the government’s energy-security arrangements. Reporting based on the audited accounts puts the energy-security-related balance at approximately ₦8.67 trillion, within the broader ₦11.2 trillion Federation-related receivable.
That distinction matters.
Because if we turn an accounting receivable into a headline saying “NNPC spent ₦11.2 trillion on private security,” we may create a spectacular headline while getting the economics wrong.
But correcting the headline does not make the underlying question disappear. It makes it more important.
Because the real question becomes:
How much of Nigeria’s oil wealth is being consumed by the cost of securing the assets that produce that wealth and can Nigerians independently see who received it, what was delivered, and what the country got back?
That is a much harder question. And therefore, a much more important one.
The security contract did not begin yesterday
The private-security experiment in Nigeria’s oil sector is not a 2026 invention.
The pivotal moment came in August 2022, when NNPC engaged Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited for pipeline surveillance in the Niger Delta.
Contemporary reporting placed the initial Tantita contract at about ₦48 billion and dated the agreement to August 2022.
But Tantita was not the only private player.
NNPC’s former upstream chief, Bala Wunti, described a broader three-region arrangement involving private contractors, with Tantita operating prominently in one area, Maton Engineering covering the Brass/central areas and Pipeline Infrastructure Nigeria Limited covering the eastern region.
So the real story is not “Nigeria hired Tantita.”
It is more interesting:
Nigeria began outsourcing a portion of the protection of critical petroleum infrastructure to indigenous private operators because the conventional security architecture had failed to stop an extraordinary hemorrhage of crude.
That decision was controversial from the beginning.
Critics questioned procurement, competition, political connections and whether private firms should have such a significant role around strategic national infrastructure. A group of indigenous contractors subsequently challenged the award process in court, alleging that they had been excluded from the bidding process. NNPC and the other respondents denied the allegations and argued that the contracts were awarded in accordance with the applicable legal framework.
Those allegations should not be converted into facts. But neither should they be dismissed as irrelevant. When a private company is paid to protect a national economic artery, the procurement question is part of the security question.
Now look at what happened to the oil
Here is where the defenders of the arrangement have a powerful argument.
Nigeria’s production crisis in 2022 was real.
NEITI’s data show that Nigeria recorded 36.69 million barrels of crude losses in 2022, including 21.15 million barrels attributed to theft and sabotage in the relevant reconciled data.
Then something remarkable happened.
In 2023, crude losses fell to 7.68 million barrels, a decline of about 79 percent from 2022. NEITI described the reduction as evidence of the positive impact of government initiatives to reduce crude losses.
At the same time, fiscalised crude production increased from 490.945 million barrels in 2022 to 537.571 million barrels in 2023, a 9.5 percent increase.
The production recovery continued.
NUPRC’s 2025 data show crude production recovering from about 1.14 million barrels per day in 2022 to 1.47 million in 2023 and 1.56 million in 2024, with production reaching about 1.67 million barrels per day by August 2025. NUPRC also reported that oil theft fell from approximately 102,900 barrels per day in 2021 to about 10,180 barrels per day in 2025.
NNPC’s own later assessment is even more bullish: it says national crude production rose from a historic low of about 960,000 barrels per day in 2022 to an average of 1.71 million barrels per day and a peak of 1.84 million barrels per day in 2025, attributing the recovery to an integrated pipeline-security model involving government agencies, communities and private surveillance mechanisms.
There is therefore a number that should make the private-security contractors’ critics uncomfortable:
Production did improve dramatically after the 2022 security intervention.
The evidence does not prove that Tantita alone caused that improvement. But it would also be intellectually dishonest to pretend the security intervention had nothing to do with it.
This is the uncomfortable middle
Nigeria’s public debate has become addicted to extremes. Either Tantita is portrayed as the saviour of the Nigerian economy.
Or Tantita is portrayed as a symbol of everything wrong with Nigeria.
Both arguments are too easy. The evidence suggests something more complicated.
Private surveillance appears to have contributed to a significant reduction in crude losses and an increase in production. But correlation is not a cheque signed by causation.
The recovery also involved NNPC’s production war room, military and other security agencies, operators, communities, regulatory interventions, repairs to damaged infrastructure, improved pipeline availability and broader operational changes.
NNPC itself said its 2024 production recovery involved joint-venture and production-sharing partners, the Office of the National Security Adviser, government security agencies and private security operators.
Production reportedly rose from about 1.43 million barrels per day when the Production War Room began in June 2024 to 1.7 million in August and 1.808 million by November.
So the correct conclusion is not:
“Tantita produced the extra barrels.”
It is: “The security architecture was one of the important ingredients in a wider production recovery.”
And that distinction is precisely why the economics deserve scrutiny.
The calculation Nigerians should be making
Suppose you spend money securing an oil asset.
The question cannot simply be: Did the thieves steal less?
The question must be: What did Nigeria gain after the cost of security?
If security spending rises by ₦1 trillion and the country recovers crude worth ₦3 trillion, that can be economically rational.
If it costs ₦3 trillion to recover ₦1 trillion of oil, it is not. And if nobody can tell Nigerians the answer because the underlying contracts, deliverables, payment schedules, recovered barrels and avoided losses cannot be independently reconciled, then the problem is not merely the size of the bill.
The problem is that the country cannot calculate its return on security. That is the ledger nobody wants to open.
There is another number Nigerians should remember
Nigeria’s 2025 NNPC profit after tax was approximately ₦7.2 trillion.
The broader Federation-related claims reported from the audited accounts were approximately ₦11.2 trillion.
In other words, the amount at the centre of the current controversy is larger than NNPC’s entire annual profit after tax.
Again: these are not comparable accounting categories. One is profit.
The other includes receivables and advances.
But the comparison tells us something about scale.
Energy security is no longer a side expense in Nigeria’s petroleum economy.
It is becoming an economic institution of its own. And institutions of that size require institutional transparency.
Why outsource the protection of a national asset?
There is a legitimate case for doing it.
The first advantage is local intelligence.
The Niger Delta is not an ordinary security environment. A man in a government uniform arriving from Abuja may know the law. He may know the weapon. He may know the mission.
But the man who grew up navigating the creek may know the creek. That knowledge can be economically valuable.
The second advantage is speed.
Private contractors can sometimes deploy personnel, boats, drones, surveillance technology and community networks faster than a conventional bureaucracy.
The third is community ownership.
The private-security model can create economic incentives for communities to protect infrastructure rather than tolerate its destruction.
The fourth is specialisation.
Pipeline surveillance is not identical to conventional policing. It requires hydrocarbon knowledge, geographic intelligence, maritime capability, surveillance technology and rapid reporting.
The fifth is measurable impact.
The dramatic reduction in crude losses and rise in production suggest that the model has delivered at least some tangible operational benefits. NEITI’s numbers are particularly striking: crude losses fell from 36.69 million barrels in 2022 to 7.68 million in 2023.
That is not nothing. That is an economic event.
But here is the danger
The same model that can work brilliantly can also create a dangerous dependency.
What happens when the private contractor becomes more powerful than the institution that hired it?
That is the question Nigeria must ask before the emergency architecture becomes permanent architecture.
There are at least six risks.
1. Procurement risk
If contracts worth billions or potentially much more are awarded without sufficiently transparent competitive processes, the security argument can become a convenient excuse for opaque procurement.
Security is important.
So is competition.
2. Conflict-of-interest risk
The closer the contractor is to political networks, local power structures or former armed groups, the greater the need for independent oversight.
Nigeria should not build a system in which the person who knows the problem best eventually becomes impossible to question.
3. Accountability risk
The military and police are ultimately subject to public institutions, legislation, courts and constitutional command structures.
Private contractors have a different accountability chain.
The more strategic the asset, the more clearly that chain must be defined.
4. Perverse-incentive risk
A security contractor should ultimately work itself out of a job.
But if insecurity creates the justification for the contract, and the contract creates revenue for the contractor, Nigeria must design incentives that reward reduced theft, not merely continued insecurity management.
The KPI should not be “number of patrols.”
It should be:
barrels protected, losses reduced, incidents resolved, downtime reduced and revenue recovered.
5. Monopoly risk
When one or a small number of contractors become indispensable, government bargaining power can weaken.
A national security architecture should never reach the point where the state says:
“We cannot afford to lose this contractor.”
The contractor should be replaceable.
The national capability should not be.
6. Sovereignty risk
A pipeline is not merely steel in the ground.
It is a national economic artery.
Whoever controls surveillance around it has access to sensitive information about production infrastructure, vulnerabilities, movement patterns and security intelligence.
That requires extremely clear rules about information, weapons, arrests, intelligence sharing, use of force and government supervision.
The bigger question: did Nigeria actually buy more barrels?
This is where the debate should move.
Not:
“Do you like Tompolo?”
Not:
“Do you support Tantita?”
Not:
“Are you against private security?”
Those are political questions.
The economic question is simpler:
How many additional barrels did Nigeria recover, how many barrels of theft did it prevent, how much revenue did those barrels generate, and what did the entire security architecture cost to achieve it?
That is the audit Nigeria needs.
Because production has clearly improved.
NUPRC’s figures show the country moving from roughly 1.14 million barrels per day of crude production in 2022 to 1.67 million by August 2025. NNPC subsequently reported a 2025 average of about 1.71 million barrels per day and a peak of 1.84 million.
That is an extraordinary recovery.
But Nigeria has been here before.
We have celebrated higher production before.
We have watched the money disappear before.
We have announced that theft is falling before.
The test is whether the improvement survives.
And gas is where the conversation gets even more interesting
There is a small but important technical correction that should be made whenever this debate gets reduced to “oil and gas production in barrels per day.”
Oil is measured in barrels per day.
Gas is normally measured in standard cubic feet per day.
That distinction matters because Nigeria’s economic future is increasingly about gas as well as crude.
A pipeline-security strategy designed around crude theft cannot simply be declared a complete energy-security strategy.
Nigeria must ask whether the same architecture is protecting gas pipelines, processing infrastructure, export systems and domestic gas supply, and whether security expenditure is helping unlock the industrial economy that gas is supposed to power.
Otherwise, Nigeria will spend enormous sums protecting yesterday’s commodity while under-protecting tomorrow’s opportunity.
The number that should terrify us is not ₦11.2 trillion
The frightening number is actually zero.
Zero is the number of acceptable excuses Nigeria should have for not knowing the return on a trillion-naira security architecture.
If the country spends billions protecting pipelines, Nigerians should be able to see:
- the contracts;
- the contractors;
- the geographic scope;
- the duration;
- the payment structure;
- the performance indicators;
- the barrels recovered;
- the losses prevented;
- the incidents recorded;
- the sanctions imposed;
- the independent verification;
- and the amount ultimately recovered from the Federation.
Not every operational detail should be public.
Obviously.
A pipeline-security plan should not be published like a restaurant menu.
But the money should be auditable.
The performance should be measurable.
And the rules should be public.
Nigeria’s real innovation may not be Tantita
It may be the idea behind Tantita.
For decades, Nigeria approached the Niger Delta as though the problem were simply criminality.
Perhaps the more sophisticated lesson is that security, economics and community legitimacy are inseparable.
The man protecting the pipeline may also be the man whose cousin knows who is tapping it.
The fisherman may know which boat does not belong.
The former militant may know which creek becomes invisible after midnight.
That local knowledge has value.
But Nigeria must be careful not to confuse local legitimacy with unlimited authority.
The state can partner with communities without surrendering the state.
That is the line.
And that line needs to be written into every future contract.
What nobody is saying
Here is what nobody is saying loudly enough:
Nigeria may finally be learning how to protect the oil it already owns.
That is good news.
But the country must not make the mistake of believing that recovering stolen barrels automatically makes every security contract good value.
It does not.
A contractor can be effective and still require scrutiny.
A contract can produce results and still deserve competitive review.
A security arrangement can save the economy and still become too expensive.
And a government can be right to outsource specialised surveillance while still being wrong if it fails to publish enough information for citizens to determine whether the arrangement is financially sustainable.
These things can all be true at once.
That is what adult economics looks like.
The next Nigerian oil revolution should be measured differently
For too long Nigeria has measured oil success by production.
Then by export.
Then by revenue.
We should now add another metric:
the cost of protecting every barrel.
If Nigeria produces 1.8 million barrels a day but spends an unsustainably large amount defending the infrastructure required to produce them, then the headline production number is incomplete.
The real KPI should be something like:
net barrels after security costs.
Not merely barrels produced.
Not merely barrels stolen.
Not merely money spent.
Value created after the cost of keeping the system alive.
That is the number investors should watch.
That is the number parliamentarians should demand.
And that is the number Nigerians should eventually see.
Because ₦11.2 trillion is not just an accounting story
It is a question about the Nigerian state.
Can a government protect its own economic arteries?
Can it do so efficiently?
Can it explain what it spends?
Can it measure what it gets?
Can it partner with private citizens and companies without creating private empires?
Can it reduce oil theft without creating a permanent industry around oil theft?
Can it turn security into production?
And, most importantly:
Can it make the Nigerian people richer because the oil is finally safe?
That is the part that matters.
Because Nigeria does not need another impressive production number.
Nigeria needs the money from that production to become visible in ordinary life.
In wages.
In electricity.
In roads.
In schools.
In hospitals.
In a stronger naira.
In lower borrowing.
In jobs.
In businesses that can plan beyond next month.
The pipeline may be secure.
The barrels may be flowing.
But the final security test is not whether oil reaches the terminal.
It is whether the wealth reaches the Nigerian people.
And until we can follow that barrel from the pipeline to the national balance sheet to the citizen’s life, there is still something nobody is saying.
About the Columnist
Dr. Jude Dike is a Nigerian-Canadian economist, public policy analyst, and best-selling author.
As the columnist behind What Nobody Is Saying he brings a distinctive blend of academic expertise, government experience, international development insight, and public-policy analysis to the national conversation.
With a PhD in Economics and a master’s degree in Oil and Gas Economics from the United Kingdom, the columnist has built a versatile career spanning academia, government, international development, and policy advisory. His professional experience includes serving as a college professor, World Bank consultant, senior legislative aide, senior government adviser, political strategist and public policy analyst.
Drawing on this broad experience, What Nobody Is Saying offers incisive, independent commentary on Nigeria’s economy, politics, governance, public policy, energy sector, and the forces shaping the country’s future. Styled in the tradition of serious, analytical newspaper commentary, the syndicated column seeks to examine the issues beneath the headlines, challenge conventional thinking, and give voice to perspectives that often go unspoken.
As a Nigerian-Canadian with extensive international exposure and deep knowledge of Nigeria’s political economy, Dr. Dike brings a uniquely cross-cultural perspective to the country’s most consequential debates, asking not merely what is happening, but what nobody is saying about why it is happening and where it may lead.
