President visits oil-rich south

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Wednesday began a trip to the troubled Niger Delta region as security forces began a controversial patrol of areas where oil facilities have been vandalised. The mobile police units have been combing the area since the weekend, ‘The Guardian’ newspaper of Lagos reported on Wednesday. Youths in the Delta region, located in the southeast, have sabotaged pipelines to draw attention to the needs of their impoverished communities and to sell the oil and fuel produced from the leakage. Oil workers have often been taken hostage. Nigerian Vice-President Atiku Abubakar warned in early September that soldiers would be sent to the Delta to protect oil and fuel pipelines unless the sabotage ended. Obasanjo, who was elected last year, plans to visit the region known as Ogoniland, which was the seat of environmental activism against past military regimes. The former government of late military ruler Sani Abacha executed minority rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others in 1995. Saro-Wiwa’s Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) welcomed Obasanjo’s visit. “It is long overdue. He is the president of Nigeria and of course he should come,” ‘The Guardian’ quoted a MOSOP spokesman as saying.