A key Nigerian oil militant, Farah Dagogo, is expected to embrace the government’s amnesty programme in the next few days, the local press reported Friday, quoting his law yer.
The report said Dagogo, the commander of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in the Eastern Delta, would surrender along with 12 junior commanders of the main militant group and 3,000 fighters.
Dagogo’s lawyer, Wilson Ajunwa, said his client had been in touch with the amnesty committee as well as the presidential adviser on Niger Delta, Timi Alaibe.
The report of the planned surrender of the key militant could not be independently confirmed.
However, MEND had earlier denied that Dagogo was in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, for consultations with the federal government over the 60-day amnesty deal, which took effect 6 August.
Another key MEND commander, Ebikabowei Victor Ben, also known as General Boyloaf, embraced the amnesty 22 August, when he and six other militants a total of 520 assorted guns, 95,970 rounds of ammunition and 14 gunboats at a public ceremony in Yenagoa, capital of Bayelsa state in the oil-rich Niger Delta region.
Boyloaf, the Bayelsa state commander of MEND, had broken ranks with his group, which has so far shunned the amnesty.
MEND leader Henry Okah has also taken the amnesty offer, but his group has promised to fight on.