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
Lagos — In the first half of this year an average of more than four hostages have been seized monthly in the Niger Delta, an unprecedented rate of kidnappings since the first stirrings of violent protest in the early 1990s in the region that produces most of Nigeria's oil.
analysis
Lagos — Nigerians last week woke up to another news of violent clash in Onitsha, Anambra State, the third in the city in the last twenty-four months. With the incessant violent clashes in the Niger Delta as well as the volatile northern part of the country ready to explode at any given time, the thinking is that corruption and poverty may be at the root of this phenomenon. Roland Ogbonnaya writes
Port Harcourt — Gunmen in a speed boat seized two Filipino oil workers in the latest in a spate of attacks targeting oil installations and workers in Nigeria's oil rich but impoverished Niger delta.
Norway-based oil services company Petroleum Geo-Sciences said the two contract workers hired by the firm were abducted around noon on Tuesday while in a small boat near a jetty used by the company.
Lagos — In the highly volatile Niger-Delta part of the country where tempers have become increasingly brittle and nerves frayed, groups bearing all manner of names and purporting to champion one interest or the other, are sprouting up at the rate of a dozen per day. Some of these groups profess their concern about the criminal neglect of the nation's oil trove and the alleged connivance of some of its political leaders.
Warri — THE WESTERN Niger Delta Volunteer Force (WNDVF) has described as deceitful the projects purported to have been executed in Ese-Edo Local Government Area of Ondo State by the Governor Agagu administration, saying that it is intended to hoodwink the Ijaw.
Lagos — Governor Jonathan Good-luck of Bayelsa State has said that it is appalling that 50 years after the discovery of oil in commercial quantity by Shell Petroleum Development Company in Oloibiri, presently located in Bayelsa, the state is yet to be connected to the national grid.
Warri — Following the resurgence of kidnapping by militants in the volatile Niger Delta region, the Federal Government has redeployed soldiers to known flash-points.
THISDAY investigations revealed that soldiers are back at major junctions and other strategic locations in Warri metropolis, and Yenagoa.
Lagos — Attacks on oil personnel and facilities by militants in the Niger Delta has been eating deep into the country's economy as about 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Nigeria's oil production is currently shut in as a result of the insurgence in the region.
Port Harcourt — FIVE South Korean workers kidnapped Wednesday by militant Ijaw youths at the Cawthorne Channel gas plant in Rivers State were set free yesterday after some 40 hours in captivity.
"All five Korean prisoners captured by our unit in the attack on the Daewoo camp were released at 4.00pm," the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an e-mail to the media.
Port Harcourt — No fewer than five men of the Joint Task Force in the Niger Delta (JTF), Operation Restore Hope, were reportedly killed yesterday during a fierce battle with Ijaw militants at Elem Kalabari in Akukutoru Local Government Area of Rivers State.