President Umaru Yar’Adua has extended an amnesty offer to the jailed rebel leader Henry Okah, detained on treason charges for over 18 months, the government said Wednesday.
“I have already the mandate of the President … to reach out to Henry Okah and offer him the amnesty,” Interior Minister Major-General Godwin Abbe said in a statement.
“We are on course with the regard to the implementation of this directive,” he said without further details.
Abbe, who leads a presidential task force on disarmament and granting of amnesty to the Niger Delta rebels, told AFP he had yet to meet Okah to relay the offer.
Okah, leader of Nigeria’s main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), was arrested in 2007 for gun-running in Angola and extradited to Nigeria where he is currently facing treason trial.
Nigeria, in a bid to end serious unrest in the restive oil-rich Niger Delta, last week announced an amnesty for the militants fighting for a greater share of the national oil revenue to go to the impoverished locals.
The amnesty, which will take effect from August 6, offers unconditional pardon to all persons involved directly or indirectly in militant activies in the delta.
On Friday, a day after Yar’Adua’s amnesty announcement, MEND said “If the proclamation was directed at freedom fighters with a cause, it would have addressed the root issues such as a genuine unconditional release of Henry Okah and others”.
MEND also said the government should have also addressed “true federalism, federal character in political appointments”.
They also wanted an investigation into “extra-judicial killings” by the country defence forces deployed to quell violence in the delta and issue a troop withdrawal time table, among a list of other demands.
MEND, which emerged in 2006 in the southern oil hub, has been accused of being behind a spate of abductions, mostly of foreign oil workers, the theft of crude oil, extortions and destruction of oil facilities in the region.
Its activities and those of other movements have caused crude production in the world’s eighth largest producer to plummet to around 1.8 million barrels a day, compared with 2.6 million in 2006.