Ijaw youths have threatened to blow up multinational oil felicities belonging to Elf Petroleum Nigeria Limited (EPNL) and Shell Development Company of Nigeria (SDPC) if the Nigerian government, in collaboration with its French counterpart, operators of Elf do not set former petroleum minister, Dan Etete, free from detention.
The youths from Andoni in Rivers and Akwa Ibom states made the vow in a release signed by their president Mike Amakiri and secretary Frank Okuku, and sent to Saturday Independent on Friday.
The statement said: �Let us, therefore, put the rest of the world on notice that the continued purported trial of Chief Dan Etete sets the entire people of the Niger Delta and the Ijaw elements in particular at war against the French government, which has allowed itself to be used by self-centred individuals for their parochial interest.�
The youths said the continued detention of the former Petroleum Minister is nothing but a schemed injustice on the part of both countries.
�We, the youths of Andoni in Andoni Local Government of Rivers State and of the Eastern Obolo axis of Akwa Ibom State, both hosts and custodians of the facilities of EPNL and SPDC in our areas, have watched with keen interest and attention the developments around the injustice termed the purported trial of an eminent son and statesman of the Niger Delta, Chief Dan Etete, in a conspiracy involving the Nigerian Federal Government, the French government and the two multinational oil companies operating on our land,� they vowed.
They observed that the �continued victimisation and schemed trial of 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.�
The body which queried to know the interest that the foreign country has in what they considered as a local issue maintained that they have evidences and proves to show that Obasanjo, through Elf and Shell, intended to assume the said oil bloc. One of such evidence they said is the �hands steering puppet show in France called legal trial of Etete.�
Mar152008