Tompolo on a Spending Spree

Government Ekpemupolo, known as Tompolo, has spent heavily in several directions this month. The PBAT Door-to-Door Movement, a group campaigning for President Bola Tinubu’s 2027 re-election and led by Tompolo as grand patron, supplied 26 vehicles each to Ondo and Gombe, 52 in all.

The vehicles were handed over in Akure and Gombe at the inauguration of local government and ward coordinators. Kestin Pondi, managing director of Tantita Security Services, spoke for Tompolo and told Ondo’s coordinators to turn the state’s reported two million registered voters into votes for Tinubu.

Governors Lucky Aiyedatiwa of Ondo and Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe welcomed the donation. In Ondo, Pondi pointed to fuel availability, education interventions and paid salaries and pensions as achievements to sell to voters.

That is not the whole bill. A separate account lists 25 vehicles for Taraba and more for Yobe, a N10 billion pledge from Tantita to the Delta State Security Trust Fund at its launch in Asaba, and desks for the Nigeria Maritime University.

Where does the money come from?

Tompolo’s Tantita Security Services holds a federal pipeline surveillance contract through NNPC Limited, first reported at about N48 billion a year and described in one account as having since expanded into a multi-trillion naira framework.

The reports do not say whether contract revenue paid for the vehicles, but critics link the two. Rival figures, including Asari Dokubo, say pipeline money is too concentrated, and regional youth platforms ask why oil-protection earnings fund campaign fleets in northern states while host communities lack infrastructure.

Tompolo’s defenders, and the federal government, say the contract is strictly commercial and credit Tantita with uncovering illegal pipeline taps, curbing crude bunkering and raising daily export output.

The handover also put a security contractor’s chief at a campaign event: Pondi runs Tantita and spoke for Tompolo. So far, no reply from Tompolo to the criticism has been reported.