The threat of violence in Nigeria’s volatile oil-producing Niger Delta has escalated after police said they would charge Moujahid Dokubo-Asari of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force with treason.
Thousands of Shell employees at the company’s operations in the city of Port Harcourt vacated their workstations as a safety precaution, the company announced recently, after Asari supporters had threatened ”grave mayhem” following his arrest. Hundreds of soldiers and riot police are manning checkpoints in Nigeria’s oil capital.
Asari was detained on Tuesday because he had called for the break-up of Nigeria in an interview published in a newspaper. Police said that was grounds enough for charging him with treason, a capital offence.
Asari’s group seeks more control of oil resources for the Ijaw people, the biggest ethnic group in the Niger Delta.
Several hundred of his followers, armed with machetes and assault rifles blocked the main road in Port Harcourt on Wednesday and threatened to launch attacks on state agencies and oil flow stations if Asari was not released.
”We live through this sort of threat all the time, but no one is saying this should be taken lightly,” said Nigeria’s Junior Minister of Oil, Edmund Daukoru. Last year, threats by Asari to unleash a ”full-scale war” and target international oil firms helped send world oil prices to then-record levels of above $50 a barrel for the first time. In 2003, a bloody Niger Delta ethnic revolt shut down 40% of Nigeria’s oil output. The Delta accounts for most of Nigeria’s oil output of 2,4-million barrels a day.