The Niger Delta Avengers has announced a new attack on a Chevron oil well in Warri Delta State, even as the group rejected the offer of negotiation by the federal government.
In two tweets, the new militant group claimed responsibility for attack on “Well RMP 20 belonging to Chevron located 20 meters away from Dibi flow Station in Warri North LGA” in Delta State.
The Avengers also announced that it is not negotiating with any federal government committee and disowned any group that may be doing so.
“This is to the general public that we’re not negotiating with any committee. If the federal government is discussing with any group, they are doing that on their own,” the group said on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/NDAvengers/status/740423028601933824
https://twitter.com/NDAvengers/status/740428140640620550
On Monday, Nigeria’s minister of state for petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu announced that the federal government had set up a committee to negotiate with the militants and suggested that the military operations in the region would be scaled back to make room for dialogue.
The junior minister of petroleum who is also group general manager of Nigeria’s state controlled oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, announced at a press briefing in Abuja that Buhari has appointed a team to dialogue with Niger Delta Avengers and the team would be led by the national security adviser, Babagana Monguno. Kachikwu, ‘opinion leaders’ and all the service chiefs would make up the team.
Who are the Niger Delta Avengers
Niger Delta Avengers is a new militancy group that is operating in the oil-rich region of Southern Nigeria.
The militants say they are waging a war for a free Niger Delta Republic in what it tags, Operation Red Economy, with a view of halting crude oil production in Nigeria to force the government to grant the group’s demands.
The Avengers claim it has reduced oil production in the country to less than one million barrels a day. An analyst at VOA News corroborates the militants’ claims saying that oil production has dropped below one million barrels a day due to the waves of attacks on pipelines and oil installations.
The militant group has released its rules of engagement and says that it doesn’t kill anybody or attack oil workers or soldiers. The Delta Avengers called on all other groups operating in the region to abide by these rules of engagement. “We need God now, more than ever,” the group said in a statement.
The Niger Delta Avengers has presented an 11-point demand to President Muhammadu Buhari and the first is the implementation of the recommendations of the 2014 National Conference. [Download Conference report HERE.]
Pro-Biafra secessionist group, Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, has pledged “total allegiance” to the Niger Delta Avengers extolling the militant group for supporting the cause of a free Biafra. MASSOB embraces the tenets of nonviolence. It is led by Ralph Uwazuruike, a lawyer.
