Nigerian militant leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari has called again for a sovereign national conference to decide the future of the oil-rich Niger Delta. He told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that the time had come for all the peoples of Nigeria to decide if they still want to “live together”.
Mr Asari was jailed on treason charges by the Obasanjo administration in September 2005 for his secession calls.
Released on health grounds in June 2007, he was ordered to avoid politics.
Admitting at the time that it would be “difficult” to comply with that order, Mr Dokubo-Asari has used the time since to call a halt to his group’s attacks on oil pipelines.
He has also organised a gathering of the Delta’s most prominent figures which has been taking place over the past two days in Abuja seeking a unified position ahead of any talks with the government.
Speaking to the BBC on behalf of both the political and military wings of his movement, Mr Asari underlined that the “only solution that will go to the basics, the foundations, the roots of the crisis in the Niger Delta is the convocation of a sovereign national conference.”
In the past nis military wing has threatened to launch multiple attacks on oil installations in the Delta, to bring production to a halt.
But Mr Asari denies that his forces have ever engaged in the kidnap of oil workers and others – he blames these on the rival Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) whose leader Henry Okah is currently being held in an Angolan jail.
President Umaru Yar’Adua is drawing up what he calls a Niger Delta Master Plan to try to bring peace to the Delta and divert more of the oil revenues into development projects for the Delta peoples.
Alongside that plan, he has asked the United Nations environment and development agencies to join forces to make a comprehensive assessment of oil contamination in the region.
Over the next year, teams of international and local experts will carry out assessments in more than 300 sites.