Nigerian separatist militants warned foreign workers to flee the Niger Delta on Wednesday as they threatened to retaliate for the arrest of their leader by attacking oil wells and pipelines.
The leader of the banned Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo Asari, was ”invited for questioning” in Abuja on Tuesday after he publicly vowed to destroy the Nigerian state, national police spokesperson Haz Iwendi said.
Gunfire erupted overnight in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt as youths took to streets to demand the 40-year-old warlord and ethnic militant be released, residents said.
Deputy NDPVF commander Alali Horsefall threatened to ”bomb oil installations” if he did not hear from Asari within hours, declaring: ”My boys are ready.”
”We don’t want to harm any foreigner, so we are asking the foreigners to extract themselves from our territory,” he said by telephone from Port Harcourt.
The restive city and heart of Nigeria’s multimillion-dollar oil industry is a sprawling industrial centre surrounded by coastal swamps. It is home to hundreds of foreign oil workers and the local base of many multinationals.
The creeks around the city are patrolled by gangs of river pirates and ethnic militants, many of them loosely associated with Asari’s campaign for an independent homeland for the 12-million-strong Ijaw ethnic group.
A statement from police headquarters said that Asari had been invited to the capital and was ”being questioned over seditious and treasonable publications credited to him in some newspapers”.
On September 10, the Daily Independent newspaper published an interview with Asari in which he said: ”Nigeria is an evil entity. It has nothing to stand on and I will continue to fight and try to see that Nigeria dissolves and disintegrates.”
A police statement issued by Iwendi said: ”When confronted with the said publication, Alhaji Dokubo admitted to, and stood by, the contents of the publication. He is [at present] cooperating with the police and may be prosecuted if found culpable.
”Meanwhile, the Nigeria police have taken adequate and sufficient security measures to ensure no breakdown of law and order. We wish to reassure all Nigerians and foreigners of their safety and the protection of oil installations.”
Thorn in the side of officials
Asari has long campaigned publicly and openly for the destruction of Nigeria, which he regards as an artificial state imposed on his people by the former British empire.
Last year, he set up secret armed camps for young militants in the creeks of the delta. Demanding independence for the Ijaw, the rebel chief clashed with security forces and rival militias. The fighting left scores dead and a string of towns and villages devastated.
The federal government initially declared him a wanted man, but President Olusegun Obasanjo eventually invited Asari to peace talks after he gave a series of high-profile media interviews and threatened to disrupt Nigerian oil exports.
He has since lived openly and in some luxury in a Port Harcourt villa but remained a thorn in the side of federal officials, campaigning for secession and repeatedly threatening to return to armed struggle.
It was not immediately clear whether the NDPVF, which has given up hundreds of assault rifles and machine guns since signing the peace deal, was in a position to carry out Horsefall’s threat.
But Asari has made himself a popular hero among the Ijaw since launching his struggle, and the river gangs fighting under his influence have a track record of hijacking pumping stations, vandalising pipelines and kidnapping oil workers.
Although the delta is home to Africa’s largest oil industry and exports about 2,5-million barrels of oil per day, the people of the region remain mired in poverty and claim that pollution has poisoned their fields and fisheries.
The leaders of several ethnic groups, including the Ijaw and the minority Ogoni community, have demanded greater autonomy and control over their mineral resources. Some, including Asari, want full independence. — Sapa-AFP