Niger Delta Avengers Attack is confirmedThe Nigerian government does not have money to continue funding the Amnesty Programme in the Niger Delta region, part of the agitation of the Niger Delta Avengers, a new group of Nigerian militants blowing up oil and gas pipelines in the oil-rich but polluted and impoverished region, although some former militants have dissociated themselves from the new ones.
“The money is not just there,” Mr. Paul Boro, President Muhammadu Buhari’s Special Adviser on the Amnesty Programme told Channels television’s Sunrise programme on Monday morning.
He said blowing up pipelines was not the way forward to resolving the crisis in the Niger Delta and admitted that he did not know what the Avengers want.
“I don’t just know what they want,” he said, adding that negotiation was ongoing, a contradiction to what Nigeria’s Vice President, Mr. Yemi Osinbajo, said at weekend.
The Vice President said there would not be negotiation with Niger Delta Avengers, describing them as criminals.
The Avengers have said that they want greater control of the oil resources and the independence of the oil rich region. They have asked International Oil Companies, IOCs, to leave the Delta and have been blowing up oil and gas facilities for some months. But many have alleged that plans by President Muhammadu Buhari to cancel contracts with former militants to protect the same pipelines they were destroying and the reduction of funds for the Amnesty Programme led to the renewed hostilities in the region.
The destruction of oil installations has brought down Nigeria’s oil production to its lowest in about two decades and also added to the pollution the region has been agitating against.
Comrade, Donyegha Ben, of the Niger Delta Coalition of Coastal Communities, dissociated the former militants from the Avengers, saying that the new guys do not what they want.
He said the former militants, who were members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, have not been paid for months.
Some analysts have alleged that the new militants are just the same new militants angry that the government has cancelled contracts to protect the pipelines they were protecting and reducing money meant for the Amnesty programme.
That programme, started for Nigeria’s late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was meant to train former militants who dropped their weapons to give peace a chance.