Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua has held his first-ever meeting with the leader of the main rebel group in the oil-rich Niger Delta, leading the rebels to express cautious optimism on Tuesday.
“It looks like this is the beginning of dialogue Mend has been advocating,” Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) spokesperson Jomo Gbomo said in an email statement to Agence France-Presse.
“If this happens, it is surely light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “We remain cautiously optimistic.”
Henry Okah, Mend’s presumed leader, met Yar’Adua at the president’s villa in Abuja on Monday, the presidency announced, describing the meeting as “very fruitful”.
The meeting was facilitated by the publisher of one of Nigeria’s leading daily newspapers, according to Mend.
Newspapers said Okah, who was in South Africa for treatment of a kidney condition, was flown to Abuja in Yar’Adua’s presidential jet.
Okah’s lawyer, Femi Falana told AFP “the meeting was to seek the possibilities of working together to achieve peace in the region”.
Okah was freed in July after nearly two years in jail after treason and gun-running charges against him were dropped under an amnesty offer.
The first-ever meeting between the president and the rebel leader came after the government had intensified efforts to end the Niger Delta crisis, offering unconditional amnesty to thousands of militants.
It also emerged on Monday that the government plans to plough 10% of the money it makes from Niger Delta oil back into the region.
A key demand of the Mend is that local communities must benefit from the region’s oil wealth.
The rebel’s three-year campaign has slashed Nigeria’s oil output by a third. Nigeria is the world’s eighth-largest oil producer.
Hundreds of oil workers, including dozens of foreigners, have been targets of kidnapping by Mend and other groups in the Delta region. It has attacked pipelines and offshore facilities and even Lagos harbour.
Although there is no precise death toll, several hundred fighters and civilians have been killed in the region since 2006.
The most sophisticated and daring of the militants operating in the region, Mend threatened on Friday to resume the “oil war” after its unilateral ceasefire, declared in the wake of the amnesty offer, expired.
Although key commanders accepted the amnesty, Mend fighters refused to lay down arms, saying the deal was “charade” which failed to address the key issues of under-development and injustice in the delta.
Mend ordered a truce in July to allow for possible talks with Yar’Adua’s government. It set up a committee — which included 1986 Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka — to run negotiations, but until Monday no formal talks had been known to have taken place.
Monday’s meeting was the first publicly announced direct contact between Mend and Yar’Adua.
“The federal government has agreed to dialogue with every and any person who can help bring lasting peace to the Niger Delta,” said a presidency spokesperson on Monday.
He refused to give details of the discussions only stating: “I know the president is determined to bring development to the Niger Delta and I am very positive it will be done.”
In the past three years Nigeria’s oil output has been cut from 2,6-million barrels a day to about 1,7-million currently. It has now been equalled by Angola as Africa’s top exporter.
And in the last year, Nigeria has also seen its foreign exchange reserves drop from more than $67-billion to $40-billion. — AFP