MEND Nigeria-Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta-MEND-Official News Site -tracking News, Articles, Interviews and Opinions, related to MEND- from 1999 to Present
Vanguard (Lagos)VIOLENT unrest in Nigeria that has led to about 30 per cent cut in
the country's crude output could persuade OPEC to maintain its level of
oil output at a near historic high when it meets next week, an energy
analyst has said. There are also indications that the current state of
insecurity in the Niger Delta may escalate further shutting in at least
half of Nigeria's 2.6 million barrels per day capacity with
implications for crude oil pricing.
This Day (Lagos)Lagos/Warri - Apparently dreading a possible all-out battle between militants, holding nine expatriate oil workers as hostages, and men of the Nigerian Army, hundreds of people from the Gbaramatu Kingdom in Warri have started moving out of the community.
Warri — THERE are fresh worries in Delta State that the nine foreign oil
workers kidnapped February 18 by the Movement for Emancipation of Niger
Delta (MEND) may not be freed soon with their abductors making a fresh
demand of compensation on the Federal Government for the families of
the villagers allegedly shot dead and injured by the Joint Task Force
(JTF) in the Niger Delta in the three-day bombardment of Ijaw
communities.
Lagos/Warri — Apparently dreading a possible all-out battle between militants, holding nine expatriate oil workers as hostages, and men of the Nigerian Army, hundreds of people from the Gbaramatu Kingdom in Warri have started moving out of the community.
This Day (Lagos)Warri - Again, hope for an early release of the nine hostages captured
since February 18 was dashed last night when the Niger Delta militants
holding them lengthened their list of demands from the federal
government.
Hope that the hostages would be released was raised early yesterday
by Delta State Governor, Chief James Ibori, based on the information
from his linksmen with the captors of the hostages, which had indicated
that the nine oil workers would be released in the early hours of
yesterday.
This Day (Lagos)Lagos - Between the last two weeks when this column was last published and
today, three major incidents with grave implications for the peace of
the polity had occured. The first was the sudden outburst in Maiduguri
in which some deranged religious fanatics wreaked violence on their
fellow citizens simply because they came from other parts of the
country and belong to a different faith. The Maiduguri mayhem had
sparked a retaliatory one in Onitsha where many citizens were killed
equally on irrational basis and properties worth millions of naira were
destroyed.
column
Lagos — Between the last two weeks when this column was last published and
today, three major incidents with grave implications for the peace of
the polity had occured. The first was the sudden outburst in Maiduguri
in which some deranged religious fanatics wreaked violence on their
fellow citizens simply because they came from other parts of the
country and belong to a different faith. The Maiduguri mayhem had
sparked a retaliatory one in Onitsha where many citizens were killed
equally on irrational basis and properties worth millions of naira were
destroyed.
GOVERNOR James Ibori of Delta State and the Federal Government
raised hope, Tuesday, that the nine foreign oil workers kidnapped in
his state, last weekend, were hale and cheerful and would be released
soon, but the next day, Wednesday, when the governor spoke again to the
press, he was not as promising and confident as he was 24 hours
earlier. Today makes it the eighth-day that the workers are in unlawful
custody and indication that they would be released in a jiffy is
fizzling out. The governor who preferred to call the militants "our
younger brothers" confirmed that the kidnappers said they would not
want to talk about the release of the hostages until they finished
mourning and burial of villagers that were killed in the air raid by
the Joint Task Force (JTF) at Okerenkoko.
Vanguard (Lagos)ONITSHA erupted. The indescribable anger that provoked the killings
in the city by the lordly Niger reflect the mood in the land. First,
was the killing of Igbo and other Christians, starting from Maidugri,
and spreading rapidly to other places in the North, in a familiar wave
of atrocity. This time, the excuse was provided by the images of
Muhammed. A mob of Moslem fanatics in the north of Nigeria, reacting to
the mostly unflattering representation of the prophet of Islam in a
Danish newspaper, over reached themselves when they began killing and
burning other Nigerians in protest. They went after a familiar target:
the ubiquitous Igbo; the symbol for the northern Moslem fanatic, of all
the things that is wrong with his world. The Nigerian version of the
protests against the Danish newspaper cartoons, in other words, took a
unique turn: while Moslems all over the world directed their anger
against the West, especially the European Union; burning flags and
torching embassies, the Nigerian Moslem turned his attention to the
Igbo, burning and killing; determined to throw one more symbolic punch
in the cycle which began with the killing of the Igbo in 1945 in Jos,
and when Inua Wada organized the first Kano pogroms in 1953. Needless
to say, it has always been taken for granted that the Igbo would roll
over and take it. But this proved to be a miscalculation.
IS the appalling show being adapted to stage by armed militants
in the restive Niger-Delta region, that is the kidnap of nine foreign
oil workers and devastation of the nation's oil installations in Delta
state of late, truly an aftermath of the February 15-18 operation by
the Joint Task Force (JTF), code-named Operation Restore Hope to
destroy some barges suspected to be used for oil bunkering?