Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited, the pipeline surveillance company belonging to High Chief Government Ekpemupolo, better known as Tompolo, says it puts more than 60,000 Niger Delta youths on monthly salaries — a total it ranks above the NDDC, NNPC, NLNG, Shell, Agip and SEEPCO combined.

The numbers behind that ranking come from the company itself. Dr. Paul Bebenimibo, Tantita’s media consultant and a Special Adviser to Tompolo, said more than 60,000 young people in the region receive monthly pay from the firm.

He spoke on the sidelines of an award Blueprint Newspapers presented to Tantita for its contribution to pipeline security and national development, at a briefing carried by several Nigerian newspapers in August 2026.

Bebenimibo said Tantita’s pipeline surveillance work, which began in 2022, had moved beyond protecting oil infrastructure, with youth employment sitting at the centre of its security model.

“Tantita is not just employing the youths. It is also giving them skills and promoting their businesses in the area by giving grants to youths, women and men,” Bebenimibo said.

According to him, that mix of jobs, skills training and community support has reduced the pull of oil theft, illegal bunkering and other criminal activities in parts of the region.

The comparison and its backers

Company officials and groups sympathetic to Tantita have advanced the argument that its workforce outnumbers the NDDC and the region’s biggest operators put together, describing the pipeline surveillance contract as a large-scale job creation engine.

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The First Phase Ex-agitators, under the Niger Delta Ex-Agitators’ Forum, called the contract “a massive job creation engine” and urged President Bola Tinubu to sustain it.

“This is not just a contract; it is a massive job creation engine. From Bayelsa to Akwa Ibom and other states of the Niger Delta region, thousands of our youths who were once lured by crime are now gainfully employed, living decent lives as protectors of our national assets,” the group said at a world press conference in Udu, Delta State.

The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) has taken a similar position, stating that the arrangement “has created employment opportunities for thousands of Niger Delta youths and contributed to reducing restiveness in the region.”

Headcounts that vary

The workforce figure credited to Tantita shifts with the speaker. Beyond Bebenimibo’s total of more than 60,000, other numbers from within the company’s support base are lower: over 45,000, cited by Presidential Amnesty Programme Administrator Dr. Dennis Otuaro; over 25,000 from a group known as the Tantita Security Ambassadors; and over 20,000 from the First Phase ex-agitators.

Those discrepancies mean the figures are not independently verified, and the comparison with other employers cannot be checked against public data. NNPC, NLNG, Shell, Agip (NAOC) and SEEPCO publish group-wide workforce figures rather than counts of Niger Delta youths employed, while the NDDC’s mandate is regional development rather than direct hiring, and it keeps no comparable register.

Tantita was awarded the pipeline surveillance contract in 2022, at a time when crude oil losses to theft and vandalism were heavy. The company has credited its operations with helping to raise national crude oil production, and says it remains committed to supporting efforts to reach 2.5 million barrels per day.

Bebenimibo also disclosed that Tantita had deployed drones to monitor the creeks, and had built a correspondents’ secretariat in Delta State, with plans to establish similar facilities in other Niger Delta states and at the national level.