Delta militants denounce Obasanjo’s plan for oil region, threaten more attacks

Militants targeting oil installations in Nigeria’s southern Niger Delta on Wednesday denounced plans unfolded by President Olusegun Obasanjo to redress grievances in the impoverished region, vowing instead more attacks to increase local control of oil wealth. Attacks and hostage-taking against oil operations since January by the group which calls itself the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) recently cut Nigeria’s oil exports of 2.5 million barrels a day by more than 20 percent. Earlier this month, the same group released 13 foreign oil workers after a five-week hostage ordeal. Obasanjo met with moderate Niger Delta leaders in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Tuesday and unfolded a plan to create 20,000 jobs in the region and invest in roads, education and health for its people. While hard line Niger Delta leaders boycotted the meeting, MEND dismissed Obasanjo’s offer of “menial jobs”. “For 50 years the wealth of our people has been looted by the Nigerian government and it believes this injustice can be remedied by providing menial jobs to indigenes of the Niger Delta,” MEND said in a statement emailed to reporters. “What we have demanded…is the control of our resources which the Nigerian government has so far ignored,” it added. MEND also restated its demands for the release of militia leader Moujahid Dokubo-Asari held on treason charges and former state governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha who is facing corruption charges. It also wants Royal Dutch Shell, the largest oil operator in Nigeria, to pay US $1.8 billion as damages for pollution to ethnic Ijaw communities in oil-rich Bayelsa state as ordered by a Nigerian court. While no new attacks have been carried out by MEND in more than a month, the group is still warning oil companies to end their operations in the Delta, which produces nearly all of Nigeria’s 2.5 million barrels of oil production. “Our halt in attacks was more of a tactical suspension which has come to its end,” it said. “At a time of our choosing we will resume our attacks with greater devastation and no compassion on those who choose to disregard our warnings.” MEND claims to be fighting for the interests of the impoverished inhabitants of the Niger Delta, who live with no electricity or running water and feel cheated out of the oil wealth by Western oil companies and the government of Nigeria, the world’s eighth largest crude producer.