A powerful militia leader from Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta has accused the government of talking peace while provoking rebel commanders with army raids.
Ateke Tom’s armed group is one of several in the anarchic delta that have fought with troops and attacked government targets. The crisis in the home of the world’s eighth-biggest oil industry has reduced output and caused oil prices to spike.
Speaking in one of his secret camps deep in the dangerous creeks of the delta late on Thursday, Tom said he wanted to participate in the peace process but he was angry about several military attacks against his strongholds in December.
”I have renounced violence. It is just that the government is provoking me, making me angry,” he said, wearing a black baseball cap emblazoned with the skull and bones symbol.
”The government is trying to mess me up by attacking me, killing my boys, burning down my properties, my boys’ cars. Is that how to pursue peace? The government must compensate the families of my boys killed, build my houses for me and buy those cars they burnt,” he said.
The government that came to power last May has tried to negotiate with militants in the delta but Tom is one of several who accuse the authorities of insincerity.
The security forces have not commented specifically on their attacks against Tom’s strongholds, but they have said that such raids were aimed at flushing out criminal gangs.
Tom also criticised the government for detaining Henry Okah, the suspected leader of another delta militia that has repeatedly attacked the oil industry. Okah has been charged with treason and is being detained in a secret location.
”If they don’t release him we will make the whole place uncomfortable. There will be no peace,” said Tom.
Guns, shrines and a televangelist
His camp, in a jungle location in the Okrika area of Rivers state, consisted of a brick bungalow, a few makeshift tents and shanties and many traditional shrines with red-and-white cloths nailed to trees and offerings of bottles of gin.
About 100 men and women were there, many armed with AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers and explosives. Some of them were watching a famous televangelist on satellite television.
The middle-aged Tom, a stout man with a white beard dressed in a white T-shirt and baggy black shorts, sported gold rings on his fingers and a big watch. He had three cellphones.
A small party of journalists was taken to speak to Tom by boat from the Rivers state capital, Port Harcourt. They were taken by a circuitous route through the maze of creeks to prevent them from knowing the location of the camp.
”Until they are sincere I will not disarm. Nobody should tell me to disarm. Let the government show that it is sincere about peace first,” he said.
Tom’s role in the Niger Delta is disputed. He sees himself as a resistance fighter of the Ijaw nation, the delta’s main ethnic group who feel aggrieved over poverty and pollution in their oil-producing lands.
But other rebels and human rights activists describe him as an extortion racketeer paid by politicians to do their dirty work. He denies this. — Reuters