2027: From the creeks to Kano, Tompolo goes national for Tinubu

Former Niger Delta warlord Government Ekpemupolo, better known as Tompolo, is expanding far beyond his traditional base in the oil-producing creeks, building a political network across northern Nigeria in support of President Bola Tinubu’s 2027 reelection bid.

The shift marks a new stage in the evolution of one of Nigeria’s most powerful former militants. Tompolo, 55, first built his influence through militancy, then through a lucrative federal contract to protect oil pipelines. Under Tinubu, he is increasingly turning that economic and security clout into overt political influence.

Tompolo takes his politics north

His PBAT Door-to-Door Movement, launched in Abuja in July, says it aims to mobilise support for Tinubu across all 36 states and 774 local government areas.

Its northern expansion is already visible. Katsina received 34 campaign vehicles, Kano 50 and Borno 44, while Nasarawa, Niger and Taraba each received 25. The movement is also distributing generators, amplifiers and microphones to local organisers.

The operation is developing its own political infrastructure. Rilwanu MD Mukhtar, a senior special assistant to the speaker of the Katsina State House of Assembly, serves as the movement’s north-west coordinator. Victor Opeyemi Omotowa, from Kogi State, is north-central zonal coordinator, while Shamsudeen Adamu Muazu and David Mark Ogwu coordinate operations in Nasarawa and Kogi, respectively.

The appointments suggest Tompolo is doing more than financing Tinubu’s campaign from the Niger Delta. He is building an organisation able to operate through local political networks hundreds of kilometres from his traditional base.

The movement’s launch at Abuja’s Transcorp Hilton drew Senate President Godswill Akpabio, House of Representatives Speaker Tajudeen Abbas, APC national chairman Nentawe Yilwatda and other senior ruling-party figures.

On 5 September, Katsina Governor Dikko Radda thanked Tompolo for choosing his state for the first nationwide rollout.

He said the decision carried symbolic weight because former president Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, who introduced the Niger Delta amnesty programme that helped end years of militancy, came from Katsina.

Sunday Adekanbi, national coordinator of the PBAT Door-to-Door Movement, rejected suggestions that starting in the north reflected any special political focus.

“We only started the distribution of campaign support materials in the north,” he told The Africa Report. “Only the blind will say that there is no visible presence or attention of the movement in the Niger Delta, being the base and headquarters of the movement.”

From militancy to pipeline power

Tompolo sits at the intersection of Nigeria’s oil economy, security architecture and politics.

During the height of Niger Delta militancy, he emerged as one of the most feared commanders associated with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. Attacks on pipelines and other oil infrastructure repeatedly disrupted production and government revenues.

After Yar’Adua’s amnesty programme persuaded militants to surrender their weapons, his successor, Goodluck Jonathan, awarded Tompolo a maritime security and pipeline surveillance contract reportedly worth $103m in 2011.

The relationship with Abuja later deteriorated under Muhammadu Buhari. Criminal charges were brought against Tompolo, he was declared wanted after failing to appear in court, and he went underground. Pipeline attacks subsequently resumed.

By the end of Buhari’s presidency, however, Tompolo had returned to the centre of the government’s oil-security strategy. Nigerian media have consistently reported Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited, the company through which he operates, as holding a pipeline surveillance contract worth around N48bn ($36m) a year.

Neither NNPC nor Tantita has provided The Africa Report with the current full contract value or terms.

NNPC spokesman Andy Odeh said details of Tantita’s operational scope, contract value and deliverables were better obtained from the company.

The government argues that its wider pipeline-security approach is producing results. NNPC says crude oil and condensate production averaged 1.77m barrels a day in 2025, the highest level in five years.

“The most devastating theft has been on our major pipelines in the past,” NNPC group managing director Bayo Ojulari told reporters. “With the combination of community-based surveillance and intervention, together with the armed forces, we have seen stability.”

Chris Andrew, a retired military intelligence officer, said community-based surveillance was cheaper than relying entirely on the armed forces.

“The military is overstretched,” he told The Africa Report. “If you have a pipeline of 300 kilometres, it means you may have to deploy the entire Nigerian army.”

A closer political bond

Tompolo’s relationship with Tinubu has developed well beyond the pipeline contract.

Tinubu visited him at his Gbaramatu home in November 2022 while seeking support for his presidential bid. Since then, Tompolo has made increasingly public displays of loyalty.

Three days before Tinubu’s inauguration in May 2023, he bought front-page advertisements across major Nigerian newspapers congratulating the president-elect.

Further advertisements followed on inauguration day, after the Supreme Court confirmed Tinubu’s election victory, on presidential birthdays and other political occasions.

The spending is substantial. Full-page advertisements in major Nigerian newspapers can cost about N15m-N22m. With Tompolo often appearing in at least five newspapers at a time, each round could cost around N100m. His annual spending on goodwill advertising could therefore reach several hundred million naira.

But the advertisements increasingly look like the visible edge of a deeper political relationship.

In October 2025, amid speculation that Jonathan might return to contest the presidency in 2027, Tompolo travelled to Bayelsa to meet the former president.

He was accompanied by Joshua Maciver, the APC’s 2023 deputy governorship candidate in Bayelsa, and Kestin Pondi, managing director of Tantita, according to people familiar with the meeting.

The Africa Report could not establish that the Tinubu presidency had asked Tompolo to intervene. But the visit aligned closely with the president’s political interests at a time when a possible Jonathan candidacy risked complicating Tinubu’s reelection calculations.

Growing power, growing opposition

Tompolo’s rise has also generated resistance.

Opposition presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar has questioned the relationship between Tantita’s federal surveillance contract and Tompolo’s spending in support of Tinubu.

Other former militant leaders, including Ateke Tom and Mujahid Asari Dokubo, have called for the pipeline contract to be divided rather than concentrated around Tompolo.

Former Ijaw Youth Council president Theophilus Alaye warned that excessive concentration of power could fuel new tensions in the Niger Delta.

“You cannot monopolise the entire Niger Delta in the hands of one individual,” he told The Africa Report. “It is completely wrong, and it can lead to the rebirth of the armed struggle in the Niger Delta.”

Adekanbi rejected the argument that Tompolo’s support for Tinubu was intended simply to protect his commercial interests.

“It is unwise to think Tompolo is doing all these for cheap recognition,” he said.

For years, Tompolo’s power rested on his ability first to disrupt and later to help secure Nigeria’s oil economy. His latest move suggests he is trying to convert that influence into something broader.

The test now is whether a powerbroker forged in the creeks of the Niger Delta can become a genuinely national political operator — and how much that matters to Tinubu as the battle for 2027 gathers pace.

(The Africa Report)