Militants reject Buhari’s meeting, attack pipeline

 

The Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate has attacked another crude oil delivery line at Effurun-Otor Ughelli South Council Area of Delta State to announce its rejection of Tuesday’s meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and some leaders of the region.

The 32-inch pipeline, which is operated by the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, was brought down by the militants at about 11.30pm on Saturday.

Greenland Mandate said although it was desirous to negotiate with the Federal Government, it was not comfortable with some of the delegates in the Chief Edwin Clark-led Pan Niger Delta Forum.

It had also threatened to attack oil facilities in the region if the Federal Government decided to go ahead with the proposed meeting because it did not trust members of the Clark committee.

A statement claiming responsibility for the attack by the militants’ spokesman, Aldo Agbalaja, said the war against oil facilities in the region would not end until the government engaged true representatives of the people in a genuine dialogue.

According to the statement, “We are reiterating our unflinching belief that the Pan-Niger Delta Forum, being coordinated by E.K Clark, is a job and therefore can never get our support. Like we said before now, the Niger Delta Greenland Justice Mandate is not opposed to a genuine dialogue between the Federal Government and the real representatives of the various ethnic groups of our region.”

The militant group stated that it had commenced the collection of names from the ethnic nationalities whom they stressed would sincerely and equitably represent the people of the region in a genuine negotiation with the Federal Government.

Both the military and community sources confirmed the development to our correspondent when they were contacted on Sunday.

Our security source said the military from the 23 Battalion in Agbarho-Otor were already scouting for those behind Saturday’s attack in Effurun-Otor.

But the spokesman for the Joint Task Force Codenamed Operation Delta Safe, Lt. Col. Olaolu Daudu, when contacted at about 8.20pm on Sunday, could neither confirmed nor denied the attack but appealed to journalists to stop giving undue publicity to the activities of the militants.