Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited has acquired more technology to improve its surveillance and detect illegal maritime activities in Nigeria, with the aim of curbing crude oil theft and pipeline vandalism.

Tantita’s Executive Director, Operations and Technical, Warredi Enisuoh, disclosed this on Thursday, the final day of the inaugural Africa International Defence Exhibition (AFRIDEX 2026), which held from October 26 to 29 at Eko Atlantic, Lagos State.

Mr Enisuoh stated that the alarming rate of oil theft, pipeline vandalism and other illegal maritime activities had prompted Tantita to seek partnerships. One of these was with a company from the United States, which provided the company with drones and other equipment. He added that Tantita was currently undergoing training.

He said, “We can’t pick up an equipment without making an assessment. That’s why we were there to make sure that this machine…It’s quite a nice machine, it’s an MK4.7 with a capacity to stay airborne for 14 hours. It’s able to fly as far as Abidjan, without refueling. It uses Jet A-1, has the capacity to see at night, and also is able to bring back images and videos in real time.

“We also have 24-7 drones that were launched up. They can stay up there for 24 hours, they only come down to rest for 30 minutes. We plan to use this for surveillance and for communities that are in jeopardy of being attacked or something like that. They give us a lot of good intel, so we can plan our response.”

According to him, Tantita also has a technology and an artificial intelligence system that detects loitering activities and tracks movements related to vessels arriving in Nigerian waters to load oil and departing afterwards. This enables Tantita to make informed decisions about how oil thieves move and operate in Nigerian waters.

“Just when they think that they’ve outsmarted us, we have satellites that fly over Nigeria, once every thirty minutes. We have a couple of them, we can choose dates, and over those periods of time and over those periods of dates, even if you switch off your inertial navigation system, we can still pick them up, through what we call Synthetic-aperture radar,” he also noted.

He said Tantita had two operations command and control centres that could be manned from anywhere in the world because the system was web-based.

Mr Enisuoh explained that the government engaged Tantita’s services in 2022 in response to Nigeria’s declining crude oil production in 2021 and 2022, after the country recorded its highest production in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown.

He stated that, “2020 was Nigeria’s highest production year, up until now, and that was the COVID year when the country was lockdown. Surprisingly, that’s when we produced our maximum fuel. By 2021, the figure went down, 2022 it kept going down. By August 2022, the Federal Government couldn’t take it anymore, and they had to open up a surveillance architecture for participation by the private security sector.”

The event, hosted by the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (DICON), brought together government officials, military leaders, defence manufacturers and technology innovators to explore developments in defence technology, indigenous manufacturing and security collaboration.