Fresh attacks on oil pipelines and a spate of new kidnappings have heightened fears that a peace deal in southern Nigeria’s oil war has lost momentum because of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s health problems.
Yar’Adua proposed an unconditional amnesty for militants in the Niger Delta last July, aimed at ending a crippling three-year conflict which slashed the output of one of the world’s biggest oil producers by around 20 percent.
Thousands of militants handed in their weapons and came in from the swamplands as part of the amnesty, which ended in October.
But since the president left Nigeria on November 23 to receive treatment for an acute heart condition in Saudi Arabia, militant leaders have grown increasingly impatient at the lack of progress towards a lasting peace deal.
“The post-amnesty programme has apparently totally stalled and no rehabilitation centre is really functioning,” a Western security source told reporters.
All the militants who laid down their arms “have been sitting around. I am not surprised at all to see a rise of criminality,” said the source, who declined to be named.
The main militant group, MEND, called off a three-month-old ceasefire originally inspired by the amnesty offer. Within days, oil installations were targeted in fresh attacks and several people were kidnapped.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in the January 30 announcement that it was returning to arms because of a lack of progress in peace talks in the president’s absence and the government’s failure to meet their demands.
They vowed to carry out fresh attacks on oil facilities “in the weeks to come”. – AFP