Timi Frank, the acting national publicity secretary of All Progressives Congress, APC, has called on the Niger Delta Avengers and other militant groups in the Niger Delta region to lay down their arms and give the government a chance to redeem its promises to the region.
In a statement on Tuesday, August 2, 2016, in Abuja, Frank also commended President Muhammadu Buhari for the approval and composition of a 13-member governing council and 10-member board of trustees for the cleanup of Ogoniland in Rivers State.
Timi Frank, who is an embattled figure in the All Progressives Congress, called on the various groups in the region to lay down their arms and give the president the benefit of doubt, saying that President Buhari will surely deliver on his promises to the region.
He said the president has demonstrated to the people of Niger Delta that his commitment to the cleanup of Ogoniland was not a political rhetoric.
Frank further urged leaders in the region to take advantage of “a sincere president like Buhari who has started doing for the region what their son, former president Goodluck Jonathan, could not do for six years as president.”
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. In the second quarter of 2016, the group emerged as the leading militant group mounting attacks on crude oil and gas installations in the troubled region.
The militant group say it is 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 claims 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.]
President Muhammadu Buhari recently rejected the Avengers’ demands saying that the unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable. The president’s first reaction to the Avengers was to declare war against them. He later promised to “crush them” as he did Boko Haram. That position has shifted to begging them in the ‘name of Almighty God’ to stop the attacks.
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.
In June, 2016 the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, another secessionist group pledged its support for the Niger Delta Avengers, saying the groups’ ideal of freedom align.
