Niger Delta: Why Militants 'Re Fighting Again
CURRENT low intensity war in the Niger Delta, Nigeria's main oil and gas region, between the Joint Task Force (JTF), a
special security outfit, and unrepentant militants, is largely due to some unfulfilled promises and some aspects of the
amnesty package perceived by the insurgents to have failed.
Findings by AkanimoReports on Monday tend to show that some of the ex-militant leaders who embraced the amnesty
programme, are seeing the Federal Government as having reneged on the juicy promises to them.The late President Umaru
Yar'Adua is alleged to have promised to reward the major ex-militant leaders with deals in the oil and gas sector,
political patronages, and major contract deals.
Some 14 months after, the aggrieved ex-militant leaders say nothing seems to be happening in that direction.While some
of the ex-militant leaders are calling for the heads of the Niger Delta Affairs Minister, Godsday Orubebe, and the
Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Committee (PAC), Timi Alaibe, for allegedly failing to deliver on the promises of
government.
But, some well-informed sources within the PAC tend to be blaming some members of the Executive Council of the
Federation who are holding key projects of the amnesty programme for the lull.Orubebe is handling the Infrastructural
Sub-Committee of the amnesty programme, while Petroleum Resources Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, holds the Oil and
Gas Sub-Committee, and the Environment Minister, John Odey, the Environment Sub-Committee.
Akinaka Richard, a Niger Delta activist who has been closely monitoring the affairs of the PAC since he was deeply
involved in the demobilisation efforts of the repentant militants told our correspondent on telephone, ''the omnibus
amnesty programme seems to be failing in the areas of infrastructural development, oil and gas and the environment''.
According to Richard, ''the ministers in-charge of these sub-committees were expected to develop action plans that would
have form the basis of funding in the 2011 budget. As i speak with you (late on Saturday night), nothing seems to be
working in those sub-committees''.
Continuing, he added, ''all that the world has been hearing about the amnesty programme are efforts of the Diarmament,
Demobilisation and Re-integration Sub-Committee which is direvtly handled by Timi Alaibe''.
While analysts tend to see members of the Executive Council of the Federation as frustrating the PAC, military
authorities are making good their promise to smoke out the unrepentant militants in their hide out.
The JTF has shut down some 18 militants' camps in the volatile oil and gas region while over 31,000 rounds of
ammunition, anti aircraft gun, rocket propelled grenades and seven machine guns have been recovered as gun battle rages
in the creeks.
JTF Commander, Charles Omoregie, an Army Major Deneral,has said that out of eight camps in Bayelsa State, President
Goodluck Jonathan's home state, six were dormant while two were active.Omoregie named the dormant ones as Ezetu 1, 2, 3,
Ekeni and Polama while the one in Foropa and Igbokiri in Southern Ijaw and Nembe council areas were active.
Apparently unshaken, the Niger Delta rebels have vowed to launch reprisal attacks, claiming that they will target the
JTF) and the oil corporations.
While the JTF claims that they are fighting criminals, the rampaging fired back, ''we are civil agitators or freedom
fighters, resisting internal colonialism and slavery by the Nigerian state”.
ENDS