Nigeria will not invite any foreign mediators to help it deal with the crisis bedevilling the oil-rich Niger Delta, President Umaru Yar’Adua said Friday.
“We are trying to avoid a situation in which the issue will be internationalised… We cannot do that because it is a Nigerian problem,” Yar’Adua told AFP in an interview.
Yar’Adua was commenting on the claim by one of the militant groups that it received confirmation of former US president Jimmy Carter’s willingness to mediate in the crisis “on condition that the Nigerian government and any other relevant stakeholders invite him”.
Yar’Adua said: “The Niger delta problem is a Nigerian problem. It is not a problem just for the people of Niger delta. It is the national effort that will solve the problem.”
“When you internationalise it and you bring, for instance, Jimmy Carter to mediate, then you are bringing a different perspective all together. Now you are saying it is the people of the Niger Delta versus other Nigerians.”
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), who claimed to have approached Carter to ask him to mediate, committed to holding a temporary cease fire if the government accepts him as mediator.
“However, if as expected, the government fails to seize on this new opportunity for peace, our actions will continue to speak volumes beyond the Nigerian shores,” the group threatened.
Since it rose to prominence two years ago, MEND has carried out the vast majority of the large-scale attacks on foreign oil companies operating in the south of Nigeria, the world’s eight crude exporter.
Such attacks, together with sabotage operations by local communities, have cut Nigeria’s production by about a quarter over the past two years.
President from 1976 to 1980, Jimmy Carter has through his centre specialised in election observation and mediations throughout the world.
Carter recently met top Hamas officials in Syria, despite objections from Israel and criticism from the Bush administration.