An armed separatist group in southern Nigeria, which admitted exploding bombs last week in oil city Port Harcourt, has warned it was stepping up its violent campaign to bring about change in the region.
“We will step up our attacks to the point where you will see several attacks on a variety of targets each day. There is no doubt in our minds that we are winning the war and our objective of chasing out the oil companies will soon be achieved,” a spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in a statement to AFP Sunday.
“We have long resorted to violence as our preferred mode for effecting change in the delta and violence without limits to achieve our objective,” MEND said.
“Every concession you see given to the Niger Delta today (by government) is on account of those like us who have fought to gain respect for the Niger Delta indigene.”
A car bomb damaged government offices in Port Harcourt on Saturday, officials said, hours after a warning by MEND that it was about to detonate two devices.
There were no immediate reports of injuries and the group later said a second bomb had failed to explode but had been retrieved and would be “redeployed at an appropriate time.”
“We confirm our operatives planted and detonated the car bomb at the Rivers State government house in Port Harcourt,” MEND said in an email statement to AFP here.
A water supply pipeline to the nearby Warri oil refinery was also bombed overnight but a spokesman said production was not halted.
The MEND which has frequently asked foreign oil firms and workers to leave the region, has recently said that it would increase its attacks on oil installations.
On December 7, it abducted four foreign oil workers — three Italians and one Lebanese — released their photographs to the media, and later stepped up attacks on Italian Agip and Anglo-Dutch Shell facilities in Rivers and Bayelsa States.
The four hostages, said to be held in an unknown location in the region, have called on their respective home governments to help in securing their release.
“Kindly put pressure on the Italian government and our company (Agip) to effect our release as soon as possible,” one of them, Italian Franco Arena, said in a 15-minute interview, published Sunday in Italian communist newspaper “Il manifesto”.
“Do all you can to get us out. We are tired,” the hostages said several times during the telephone interview.
Lebanese Imad Saliba also requested that his government and family be contacted. “Please, do everything within your power to set us free as soon as possible,” the newspaper said.
The MEND has vowed not to release the four hostages untill all their demands are met.
The movement, which demands a larger share in oil revenues, compensation for communities affected by oil pollution and the the release of some Niger Delta citizens, has accused some leaders and citizens as “sabotaging all efforts at resource control for selfish reasons.”
“By stepping up our attacks, we have made it more difficult for these criminals to get their regular paychecks from the Nigerian government,” it said in Sunday’s email message to AFP.
“We will surely punish them for their actions very soon. They will not enjoy the blood money they have been making. When the time comes, you will be informed as usual,” it said, without giving further details.
Nigeria’s Oil Minister Edmund Daukoru and the state governors of Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Cross River, Edo and Akwa Ibom are from the volatile delta.
On if more attacks are envisaged during Christmas season and before the year runs out, the MEND said it “will not discuss our plans for attacks. We will give a short notice whenever we intend to carry out an attack and a statement will follow immediately after.”