The most prominent Nigerian militant group threatened on Monday to attack foreign workers with construction firm Julius Berger if it does not halt operations in the capital Abuja within a week.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) said its threat against the country’s largest construction firm was in reaction to a road accident in Abuja on Friday, when a Julius Berger truck crashed into a commuter bus killing at least 12 people.
But security sources said the militants might not be able to launch such an attack outside the Niger Delta, where they are demanding a greater share of the region’s oil wealth. Mend rarely threatens attacks outside the delta.
Mend set an August 11 deadline for the company.
”Failure to vacate its staff from construction sites and halt ongoing projects in … Abuja on the deadline will result in unprecedented deadly attacks on the expatriate staff of Julius Berger,” the group said in an emailed statement.
A spokesperson with the firm, the Nigerian unit of German builder Bilfinger Berger, had no immediate comment. The company is working on numerous government building and road projects in the capital.
A mob attacked Julius Berger employees following the incident on Friday, hurling stones at them and setting the damaged vehicle on fire.
Empty threats?
Mend, responsible for most of the attacks in the delta that cut a fifth of Nigeria’s oil production since early 2006, has threatened to launch attacks outside the Niger Delta a few times in the past two years but has not followed through, security sources said.
Two security sources said they didn’t believe the group, a loose organisation of militia groups based in the swamps of the southern delta, had the capability to launch such an attack.
”Mend has demonstrated it has the ability to follow through on its threats in the Niger Delta. But they haven’t been able to make good on their threats anywhere else,” said a private security source, who did not want to be named.
Mend in June took many by surprise with a bold attack on Royal Dutch Shell’s offshore Bonga oil field, which lies some 120km off the delta coast.
Julius Berger, one of Nigeria’s biggest private sector employers, has already halted work in the Niger Delta after two of its German employees were kidnapped last month.
Mend offered to help in the release of the two captives since they were not part of the energy sector. – Reuters