Militants stopped thousands of supporters of Nigeria’s ruling party from attending a presidential campaign rally in the main city of Africa’s oil heartland, delegates said on Saturday.
Dozens of militants dressed in army fatigues and armed with assault rifles and machineguns blocked the main road to Port Harcourt and turned back People’s Democratic Party (PDP) supporters from three Niger Delta states, they said.
Nigerians are due to elect a president, state governors and state and federal legislators in landmark polls in April that should mark the first transition from one elected government to another in the world’s eighth biggest oil exporter.
Thousands of other party supporters, however, found their way to the rally which went ahead without any hitches.
President Olusegun Obasanjo told flag-waving PDP supporters that two state governors were not at the event because they had encountered difficulties on the way.
“The governor of Delta state and the governor of Edo state…them say they get small holdup for road,” Obasanjo said in halting English, apparently referring to the militants’ roadblock.
One delegate who asked not to be identified told Reuters by telephone: “We encountered a roadblock at a place called Elele, we had to turn back.”
Speaking from the Bayelsa state capital Yenagoa, he added: “More than 2,000 of us were in the entourage from Bayelsa, Delta and Edo with (police) escorts. We managed to escape to Yenagoa.”
The police were not immediately available for comment.
The PDP, which has ruled Africa’s most populous nation and biggest oil producer since 1999, launched its presidential campaign a week ago in the commercial capital, Lagos.
Thousands of foreign workers have fled the Niger Delta since violence erupted in the region in 2006, and worsened this year.
A total of 38 foreign hostages are being held by different armed groups in the delta, which accounts for all the country’s oil production from Nigeria.
Last Sunday, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which says it is fighting for the poor people of the delta to gain control of the region’s oil wealth, raided a police station in Port Harcourt and freed one of its leaders and 125 detainees.
The group said on Saturday it would keep three foreign oil workers it is holding until Obasanjo leaves office at the end of May because negotiations to free them had collapsed. (Additional reporting by Tume Ahemba)