Nigeria’s oil export activities may suffer further setback soon as Ijaw youths in the Niger Delta have threatened to attack the facilities of the oil giants; Elf Petroleum Nigeria Limited (EPNL) and Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) if the French government, the home country of EPNL, fails to release Chief Dan Etete, former Nigerian Petroleum Minister.
In a statement signed by Mike Amakiri and Frank Okuku, for Andoni and Eastern Obolo youths, the continued trial and incarceration of Chief Etete by the French government was an injustice to the people of the Niger Delta and has set France at war against Ijaw people.
According to the youths, Chief Etete’s problem in far away France was orchestrated by the immediate past Nigerian administration, adding that its was all about the power tussle between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his then deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the intent by the former president to wrest an oil bloc from him.
“We wish to point out that we have observed that the victimization and schemed trial of Chief Etete by the French government, the home country of Elf has been traced back to the power struggle between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his then-deputy, Atiku Abubakar, and the intent by Obasanjo to, as an act of vendetta, wrest an oil block, OPL245, held by Etete, a true son of the oil-rich Niger Delta and a core Ijaw man, by all means, fair or foul.
“What should have puzzled the world, but which has become crystal clear to us is the interest of a foreign nation in a local issue. We wish to state that we have evidences and proves to show that Obasanjo, through Elf and Shell, the companies he and his cohorts intend to assume the said oil bloc, is the hands steering puppet show in France called legal trial of Etete”, the youths said in their statement.