The Chairman of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Festus Osifo, has commended the leadership of the Department of State Services (DSS) for the arrest and prosecution of terrorists and bandits across the country.
Osifo said the arrests and prosecutions were sending the right signal to criminal elements terrorising communities nationwide.
“When they are arrested and prosecuted, the bad guys get the clear message,” he noted.
Osifo backed the position of the DSS leadership that terrorists and bandits whose activities had led to the loss of human lives should face the death penalty, saying such punishment would serve as a deterrent to other criminal elements.
“When that is done, the other bad guys will know it is no longer business as usual,” Osifo noted.
The TUC chairman urged the DSS to sustain the tempo of arrests and prosecutions, noting that citizens had a duty to hold the government accountable on all fronts.
“When government does wrong things, we condemn them. When they do positive things, we are also duty-bound to commend,” he noted.
Osifo lauded the DSS Director-General, Oluwatosin Adeola Ajayi, for what he described as ongoing reforms in the Service and urged him to do more to tackle insecurity across the country.
In a related development, the Department of State Services (DSS) arraigned two additional suspected members of a syndicate that specialises in stealing crude oil in Akwa Ibom State.
The latest arraignment brings to 19 the number of suspects being prosecuted for crude oil theft in the state.
Both men, Arepade Dominic Ekprese and Benson Ekiokekeme Innocent, were docked at the Magistrate Court sitting on Fulga Road, Uyo.
The Magistrate Court declined jurisdiction in the matter, citing the Federal High Court as the appropriate court to handle the case.
However, the Magistrate Court remanded the suspects at the Uyo Medium Correctional Facility for an initial period of 21 days.
A security source disclosed that, on 9 April 2026, an intelligence-driven operation led by the Joint Task Force South South, Operation Delta Safe (JTF-SS OPDS), busted the syndicate.
Twenty-six crew members and two motorised tankers, namely MT WESTAF and MT MKPODU, were apprehended.
According to the source, both vessels were arrested while siphoning crude oil from a platform operated by a major oil company on the shores of the state.
Seventeen of the suspects and the two vessels were earlier arraigned before the Federal High Court in Uyo and have been remanded at the Medium Security Correctional Centre, Uyo, pending the resumption of the matter in September.
The source also revealed that the ongoing intelligence-driven anti-crude oil theft operations across the Niger Delta region are part of the Federal Government’s resolve to shore up the nation’s daily crude oil production, which will, in turn, increase the country’s foreign exchange earnings.
Linus Aleke
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