By Emma Amaize, Regional Editor, South-South, Festus Ahon, Egufe Yafugborhi & Perez Brisibe

WARRI— THE  Federal Government is waiting for reports from the National Security Adviser, NSA, Major General Mohammed Monguno (retd.); service chiefs and other top government officials mandated to interface with militant groups and other stakeholders in Niger Delta, before commencing the much awaited dialogue.

This came on a day Niger Delta Greenland Justice Movement, NDGJM, an Urhobo militant group, blew up the Ogor-Oteri major delivery line operated by Nigeria Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, and Shorelines Petroleum and served a notice to also bomb Warri and Port Harcourt refineries as well as Utorogu Gas Plant.

Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, confirmed to Vanguard on phone, yesterday:  “The President has charged some people with engaging the various militant groups, and now that they are waiving the white flag, there will definitely be formal talks.

“But before that, the NSA, service chiefs and all those involved need to bring their reports, they will be assessed before dialogue will kick-off,” he said.

Investigation by Vanguard showed that the Presidency was aware of the success of the consultative meeting of the Niger Delta monarchs, elders and stakeholders in Effurun, near Warri, Delta State on August 19, following which the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, declared an unannounced ceasefire.

Militants vs Buhari

The government was also conscious that the NDA had given the pan-Niger Delta group, led by Chief Edwin Clark, the authority to represent it in talks with government.

Presidency contacts Clark

Chief Clark told the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, one of the top officials involved in the interface, last Friday, in Warri, that soon after the NDA heeded the advice of Niger Delta monarchs and leaders to stop bombing oil pipelines, the Chief of Staff to the President got in touch with him to congratulate the leaders for a job well done.

He said the Chief of Staff told him that President Muhammadu Buhari was prepared to receive the leaders whenever they were ready.

“Our governor here, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, was also contacted by the Villa and he called to tell me that he had been asked to facilitate our visit when we are ready,” Clark said.

He told Kachikwu that as a worthy son of the region, he should liaise with Governor Okowa to fix a date for the Niger Delta leaders to formally meet and brief President Buhari on the meeting and other necessary things to achieve peace in the region.

Pan-Niger-Delta group garners more support

While preparations are on for an initial meeting to brief the President, the leaders are also fine-tuning arrangement to ensure that representatives of all the ethnic nationalities in the region were involved.

The acceptability of the pan-Niger Delta group, which the leaders established to drive the dialogue and negotiations, was further bolstered when the NDA handed a power of attorney to the leaders to represent it.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger-Delta, MEND, also surrendered leadership of the process to Niger Delta leaders and formally disbanded its Aaron Team 2, led by Odein Ajumogobia, during the week.

Other militant groups, including the Reformed Egbesu Fraternity, Ultimate Warriors of Niger Delta and Adaka Boro Avengers, have also declared their support for the pan-Niger Delta group.

Suspicion

What, however, raised fears in the minds of Niger Delta leaders was the commencement of “Operation Crocodile Smile” in the region by the military at the time the people were expecting government to put in place a template for dialogue.

The leaders were as at ,yesterday, cautiously watching President Buhari to know whether he actually wanted peace or otherwise, especially following his recent threats in Nairobi, Kenya, to give militants in the region the Boko Haram treatment.

NDGM still on rampage

Findings by Vanguard showed the only militant group still on the rampage at the moment was the Niger Delta Greenland Mandate, NDGM,  an Urhobo militant group in Delta State, which in the early hours of yesterday, blew up another oil facility in the state.

A dependable source said: “Chief Clark sent some Urhobo leaders to reach out to the leaders of the militant group before he left Warri for Abuja at the weekend, but the group is still playing hard to get.”

Clark/Ijaw monarchs’ row resolved

Beside the NDGM, another knotty matter in the unity of Niger Delta leaders was the skirmish that erupted, last week, between Chief Clark and some Ijaw monarchs over the attack on them by the former Federal Commissioner for Information for visiting Kachikwu in Abuja after the Effurun consultative meeting without his mandate and consent of other ethnic nationalities.

It was a troubling development, as the monarchs slammed the Ijaw national leader, declaring that they were not answerable to him.

They noted that there had been other negotiations before the Effurun meeting convened by Clark, and were, therefore, not answerable to him in their search for peace in the region.

However, a group, led by the former Minister of Police Affairs, Alaowei Broderick Bozimo; former Supreme Court judge, Justice Francis Tabai; Mr Olisa Imegwu, Prince Maikpobi Okareme, Dr. Efiong Edunamn (Akwa Ibom),  Prof G G Darah and Comrade Japhet Ogbueri (Rivers), intervened and resolved the impasse, yesterday.

Bozimo told Vanguard:  “We are happy to announce that the misunderstanding between our South-South leader, Chief Edwin Clark, and some Ijaw traditional rulers has been amicably resolved.”

Contacted on phone, one of the Ijaw monarchs, HRM King I.  Timiyan  (JP), Ebenanaowei of  Ogulagha  Kingdom, confirmed that the matter had been laid to rest.

“People like Bozimo, Tabai and others appealed to us, we are royal fathers, and we cannot allow our anger to go wild.

“So, we have accepted Chief Clark, he is our subject, and we cannot say that because of what happened, he is no longer our subject.

“We have forgiven him, what we are interested in now is how to move forward and let peace reign in Niger Delta,” he said.

The Bolowei of Gbaramatu kingdom and former chairman of Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission, DESOPADEC, Chief Wellington Okirika, who represented Gbaramatu kingdom at the Abuja meeting, also said: “Yes, the matter has been resolved, we have to move forward.”

Ayemi-Botu differs

Former National Chairman of  Traditional Rulers of Oil Producing Communities of Nigeria, TROMPCON, HRM, Pere Charles Ayemi-Botu, however, said:  “I am just coming out of the meeting, Broderick Bozimo, Justice Tabai and others were at the meeting, as far as I am concerned, the matter has not been resolved.

“I told them at the meeting that Clark must withdraw his statement that he did not give the traditional rulers mandate to attend a meeting in Abuja because nobody gave him such power.

“We are traditional rulers and he is our subject. And I also made them know that I will not attend a meeting again in Clark’s house, but I will still be involved in the move for peace in the region.

“I have been involved in it for a long time and Nigerians know my role, I did not obtain mandate from Clark to do what I have been doing since, so he has to withdraw that statement.”

New attack

Meanwhile, despite the ongoing military “Operation Crocodile Smile” in the Niger Delta, NDGJM, in the early hours of yesterday, blew up the Ogor-Oteri major delivery line, operated by the Nigeria Petroleum Development Company and Shorelines Petroleum in the state. It also served a notice to bomb Warri and Port Harcourt Refineries as well as Otorogu Gas Plant.

The group in a statement by its leader, “Gen” Aldo Agbalaja, claimed responsibility for the attack at about 3.00 hours, adding that the task was executed by its Uproot Team B.

It said:  “Recent developments around our region, especially as it concerns the issue of justice and our inalienable right to protect our heritage, have proven us right all along. Now it has become clearer who is serious about getting justice for our people and who has been using the name of the region and the destinies of all our peoples to feather their nests, raising dusts merely to harass the Nigerian state and the oil multinationals into parting with money.

“Although some selfish machinery, merely put together to achieve some pecuniary ends, has been parading in the name of the peoples of the Niger Delta, the Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate will not be derailed on its mission to get justice for the people.”

The group said those who wanted to join the self acclaimed leaders of the region to make quick money in the arrangement they had put together were free to do so.

Noting that it lacked confidence in the pan-Niger Delta initiative, the group said:  “When lines are blurred, justice is most likely to be miscarried. If there shall be a negotiation, it must be seen and must, indeed, be representative of all the individual nations of the region equally.

“The drama that trailed the visit of some Ijaw royal fathers to the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, in Abuja, recently, is more reason equity must be a factor in setting up a body that will dialogue on behalf of all the peoples of the Niger Delta.

“If the said leader could not respect the royal fathers of his ethnic nation, if he is lording his will over them, what chance do other nations have?

“That said, the Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate will no longer sit quietly, watching the endless harassment of our people in various parts of the region by the Nigerian military. We had once warned against the victimization and harassment of defenseless people of the region, especially in the creeks. But rather than heed, the Nigerian military has increased its presence and made life more difficult for our people.  They are now killing our people on the basis of mere suspicion, this cannot continue.

An eye for an eye

“With the launch of their ‘Operation Crocodile Smile’, the Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate is also serving a notice on the commencement of our ‘Operation Crocodile Tears’. It shall from now on be an eye for an eye.

“For every military atrocity carried out in the creeks and hinterland of the Niger Delta, the Nigerian armed forces will have the Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate to contend with.

“To this end, we are alerting all those working in the UQCC/UPS Erhomukokwarien in Ughelli, Eriemu Pigging Manifold in Agbarha, Otorogun Gas Plant, Olomoro Flow Station, Warri Refinery, Port Harcourt Refinery, Eleme, OB-OB and Obite gas plants in Omoku to evacuate because what is coming to those facilities are beyond what anybody has seen before.

“We do not want innocent blood being spilled.  Therefore, we advise all indigenes living in the vicinities of the facilities to relocate for the time being.

“The world should, however, note the bloodbath that is about to commence in our already beaten, battered, squeezed and impoverished homeland, the Niger Delta.

“It is all the baby of the Nigerian government; they are the people who are in one breath preaching resolution through dialogue and also breathing bullets and bombs on a troubled, but trusting people.

“Hold the Nigerian President responsible for the genocide that his armed forces is about to unleash on our people.”

Itsekiri, Ijaw groups split over talks with FG

In a similar vein, an Ijaw group, Niger Delta Security Watch Organization, NDSWO,  yesterday, differed with the Warri Study Group, WSG, an Itsekiri group, over the latter’s denunciation of the purported interface by Ijaw leaders, led by Chief Edwin Clark, under the auspices of a pan-Niger Delta coastal states, which it dismissed as an Ijaw agenda.

WSG had in a communiqué by the chairman and secretary, Edward Ekpoko and Tony Ede, respectively, warned the Federal Government to be wary of Ijaw leaders and sponsors of militant groups, who want to barter the interest of other Niger Delta ethnic nationalities, saying Ijaw plot was different from Niger Delta agenda.

However, NDSWO, in a counter-statement by Dickson Bekederemo, said: “Our attention has been drawn to a statement made by a class of ltsekiri that are anti-progressive in nature, under the auspices of Warri Study Group. Ordinarily, one ought not to respond, but for the sake of the public that might want to believe them.

“We state that its allegation of elders encouraging what they termed criminality is baseless and unfounded and a clear attempt to portray one ethnic group as criminals.

“Any unbiased tribe in the Niger Delta is aware that rebellious spirit resides in the heart of an average Niger Delta youth that is knowledgeable of the obnoxious or inhuman laws that stole the region’s common heritage.

“Several genuine, legitimate and peaceful efforts were made by the aborigines of Niger Delta, but to no avail. The immigrants may not see any need to strive for political and economic emancipation but the aborigines, even prior to independence, have been agitating for an autonomous Niger Delta because of their peculiar needs.

“While we acknowledged the fact that war does no one any good, the question we want to ask is:  Has anything good come to Niger Delta without violent agitation? OMPADEC was established by Ibrahim Babangida as a result of the blood sacrifice made by young army officers from Niger -Delta, led by the late Major Orkar.  The aftermath of Ogoni agitation gave birth to 13 per cent derivation.

“Hundreds of Ogoni youths and the renowned environmentalist, Ken Saro Wiwa, sacrificed their lives for economic liberation of the Niger Delta. In 1999, NDDC was established in direct response to Kaiama Declaration. In that struggle, hundreds of defenseless and harmless ljaw youths were massacred.

“Sequel to the rebellious act of MEND, the late  President Yar’adua granted amnesty and went further to establish the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs. The palliative institutions established to assuage the economic and environmental pains of the region, neither the ljaw nor the Ogoni, are the sole beneficiaries.

“We need to know, is the Warri Study Group like the bird called Chichidodo? The bird that hates faeces, but feeds on the maggots that comes out of it? We want to state that the disposition of Warri Study Group over issues relating to developmental strides in the region is apparently portraying them as saboteurs.

“It appears to be supporting the interest of external factors. In 1991, some anti-progressive elements vehemently opposed the siting of Delta State capital in Warri. The same scenario is playing out now.

“Mr Edward Ekpoko  voluntarily attended the meeting convened by Pa Clark. He did not object to the issues raised and resolution reached, only for him to turn around with the intention to sabotage the gains already recorded.

“The ltsekiri are highly educated and also knowledgeable in law that protects rights of inhabitants of a region as it relates to ownership of resources in civilized countries like America, Britain etc. We call on progressive minds among the lwere children not to allow the few among them that are anti-progressive in nature to drag the highly respected and progressive minded lwere children to the mud.”