LAGOS: The Asari Dokubo-led Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF) has asked the federal government to withdraw its troops from the Niger Delta.
In a statement, it said the Joint Task Force deployed to quell violence in the region was “an occupational force.”
“The Nigerian government should immediately withdraw all its security forces constituting occupational forces and terror groups in the Niger Delta,” the statement signed by NDPVF field commander Richman Yinbiri stated.
The government deployed troops to the region early last month to end gang warfare between the NDPVF led by Mujahid Dokubo Asari and arch rival Niger Delta Vigilantes led by Ateke Tom. The NDPVF statement said the government should rebuild two villages -- Okuruama and Tombia -- destroyed during the gang violence and that people who fled their homes should be helped to return.
The statement also called on the government to “guarantee and facilitate attainment of the legitimate rights of the Niger Delta peoples in their demand for self-determination and resource control and the immediate convocation of a sovereign national conference,” reiterating a demand made by Asari late last month. Then, Asari’s group threatened to go to war against the government if its demands for a bigger slice of Nigeria’s oil wealth, greater autonomy for the Delta’s Ijaw people and a national debate on Nigeria’s problems were not met.
The group also warned oil multinationals and foreign workers to leave the delta, which produces almost all of Nigeria’s 2.3 million barrel a day output of light, sweet crude, the type best suited to refining into petrol.
The threats sent global crude oil futures spiralling upwards, and they burst through the crucial 50 dollars a barrel barrier last week, largely because of the unrest in Nigeria. Nigeria is the world’s sixth largest and Africa’s biggest producer of crude oil, and has proved reserves of some 27 billion barrels.
The west African country derives more than 95 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from the sector, but despite its massive oil wealth, its 130 million people, particularly those in the Niger Delta, live on less than one dollar per day, according to the UN.
The rival delta gangs signed a truce on October 1, and agreed to lay down their weapons, after holding talks with the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo in Abuja.
