The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the main armed group fighting in Nigeria’s southern oil region, said it’s poised to end a three-month cease- fire and resume attacks on the country’s oil industry.
“We are aware the military has acquired more gunboats, and we are equally prepared,” Jomo Gbomo, a spokesman for the group known as MEND, said today in an e-mail, adding that “2009 will decide if Nigeria will continue in the club of oil exporters.”
The authorities will maintain order and prevent further attacks on “national assets, either onshore or offshore,” according to Lieutenant Colonel Sagir Musa, spokesman for the military task force in charge of security in the Niger Delta. “If there was any cease-fire, we were not aware of it,” Musa said by telephone from Port Harcourt, the hub of the oil industry.
MEND announced a unilateral cease-fire on Sept. 21 after carrying out a week of assaults on oil installations, provoked by what it called a military offensive against its camps. Crude- pumping stations run by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corp. were damaged in the attacks.
Violence and sabotage by armed groups in the delta region, which produces almost all of Nigeria’s oil, have cut more than 20 percent of the country’s crude exports since 2006 and deterred investors. MEND claims to be fighting for the region’s poor who are yet to benefit from its oil wealth.
Okah Trial
MEND decided the cease-fire was “on borrowed time” after negotiations for the release of its leader Henry Okah failed to yield results, Gbomo said. Okah faces trial on treason and gun- running charges. MEND has held two British hostages for more than 100 days pending Okah’s release, accusing the U.K. government of backing Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua.
“The British hostages represent voodoo dolls and their fate is tied to that of Henry (Okah),” Gbomo said. “They are in the hands of men who have no qualms to replicate the same treatment Henry will suffer, as a sacrifice for the role their government has played in prolonging and complicating the crisis.”
U.K. officials in Nigeria couldn’t immediately be reached by telephone for comment.
While MEND claimed it was maintaining a cease-fire, other armed groups continued attacks on the oil industry, targeting supply vessels and kidnapping workers for ransom.
Armed men in speedboats attacked two vessels working in Addax Petroleum Corp.’s Oil Mining Lease 123 on Dec. 19, killing a Filipino captain, officials from two security companies working in the area said yesterday. Addax didn’t respond to phone and e- mail enquiries for confirmation.
At least 52 foreigners have been abducted this year in the Niger Delta, according to Arild Nordland, managing director of Bergens Risk Solutions, a Fantoft, Norway-based risk advisory company.