Nigeria: Militants threaten to cripple oil exports if demands not met

Nigerian militant leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari talks to journalists
outside the Federal High Court in Abuja, Nigeria, January 17, 2006.


reutersalertnet: Ethnic Ijaw militants claiming responsibility for a spate of attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria's Niger Delta have threatened new raids to cripple the country's oil exports if demands to free detained leaders are not met within 48 hours.

Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location on Tuesday, a spokesman for a militant group told IRIN they would hold on to four foreign oil workers taken hostage last week failing the release of militia leader Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, who is in government custody pending trial for treason.

The oil workers were kidnapped last Wednesday in a raid on an offshore oil platform run by Royal Dutch Shell in the Niger Delta region.

In addition to recent attacks on pipelines that triggered cuts in Nigeria's oil exports, the militants claimed Sunday's attack of Shell's Benisede flow station in which one oil worker was killed. The assault forced the company to evacuate four platforms in the delta swamps.

"We maintain our demands that they should free Dokubo-Asari and other Ijaw leaders in detention in 48 hours," Brutus Etikpaden, who claims leadership of the new Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), told IRIN by phone.

"Otherwise we're going to attack oil installations and stop oil exports from Nigeria," he added.

Etikpaden last week allowed IRIN to speak to the hostages by phone.

He said the group was offering to free the four captives in exchange for the release of the Ijaw leaders, but warned that MEND's long-term aim was local control of the delta region's oil wealth.

"We have embarked on Operation Climate Change, to take over our oil and show the Nigerian government that the Niger Delta people are not fools," he said. Read more