Niger Delta militants will take
up arms again and throw the country into
chaos if President Jonathan is not re-
elected for a second term in 2015, former
militant leader Mujahid Asari Dokubo has
said.
Addressing a news conference in Abuja at
the weekend, Dokubo, who led an arms
struggle against the Federal Government
for years in the past, said the peace in
the Niger Delta at present is because
Jonathan is president and that chaos will
return if he is denied re-election.
“The day Goodluck is no longer the
President all of us who are on sabbatical
will come back. There will be no peace
not only in the Niger Delta but
everywhere. If they say it is an empty
boast let them wait and see,” said
Dokubo, who as leader of the Niger Delta
Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF)
coordinated a campaign of violence in the
oil producing areas.
Militant activities disrupted oil production
in the Niger Delta for years until a
Federal Government amnesty programme
was instituted in 2009 by then-President
Umaru Yar’Adua. Of recent, Nigeria’s oil
production is falling again because of
large-scale crude theft.
Dokubo, who is also former President of
the Ijaw Youth Congress (IYC), said the
relative peace in the Niger Delta is
because Jonathan is president and not
because of the amnesty programme,
which he said he had rejected because he
committed no crime.
He said Jonathan has performed better
than previous governments, and that he is
holding the post of president for the
Niger Delta region which should have an
uninterrupted eight years before power
would shift to another zone.
Dokubo also said he was opposed to the
reported plans by the Senate to introduce
a six-year single term for president and
preclude Jonathan from running in 2015.
On the feud between President Jonathan
and Rivers State Governor Chibuike
Amaechi, Dokubo described the governor
as a traitor who has chosen to return the
people of the region to years of slavery.
Dokubo spoke just a week after President
Jonathan’s adviser on amnesty, Mr.
Kingsley Kuku, was reported to have said
in the United States that chaos would set
in unless Jonathan is re-elected.
He said he was reiterating Kuku’s
prediction of “dire consequences” should
the President fail to be re-elected in
2015.
Dokubo’s latest stance on Jonathan is a
departure from his comments in
December when he criticised the
president for allowing “greedy” and
“corrupt” people to hijack his
government. Dokubo had said Jonathan
will not win re-election unless he got rid
of those people, but none of them has
been removed from the government yet.
“The President has allowed himself to be
imprisoned by some greedy individuals.
His goodwill will soon go and that will
affect his second term chances,” he had
said.
The story of Dokubo
Last August, American newspaper Wall
Street Journal reported that Dokubo was
one of the beneficiaries of multi-billion
naira oil pipeline protection contracts, for
which the Federal Government is paying
him N1.44 billion a year.
While not all of his account of life in the
mangrove swamps could be verified, 49-
year-old Dokubo was one of Nigeria’s
best-known oil marauders.
About 26 years ago, the Journal said,
Dokubo went to study guerrilla warfare in
Libya during the time of the late Col.
Muammar Gaddafi. He said he was given
$100,000 to stir up trouble back in
Nigeria, an oil competitor to Libya.
Fomenting conflict proved easy in the
restive Niger Delta he returned to in the
early 1990s. From a local governor, Mr.
Dokubo said, he procured weapons and
money to build a militia that ultimately
was several thousand strong. For years,
they broke open pipelines, filling canisters
with crude oil and refining some of it
through timeworn techniques used by
locals to boil palm-tree sap into wine.
The government struggled to lure him out
of the mangroves. Dokubo responded to
one amnesty offer that he considered
meager by announcing a death threat
against petroleum workers. Shell
evacuated hundreds of expatriates and oil
derricks briefly slowed to a stop. The next
day, oil prices hit $50 a barrel for the first
time.
The Federal Government offered Dokubo
a truce and $1,000 apiece for his AK-47
rifles, numbering 3,182, the Journal
reported. He said he took the deal and
used the profits to purchase more
weapons and return to the swamp.
There, he was finally arrested and coerced
into another round of negotiations.
Fearing assassination, he fled to Cotonou,
Benin, where he said he founded a school
for Niger Delta children. He showed a
video of him teaching kids kung fu at the
school, the Wall Street Journal reported.
New warlords quickly took Dokubo’s
place. Marauding under noms de guerre
like Gen. Shoot-at-Sight, Gen. Africa and
Gen. Young Shall Grow, they formed a
loose confederation of gunmen calling
itself the Movement for the Emancipation
of the Niger Delta, or MEND, and crippled
enough oil infrastructure to bring Nigeria’s
production on some days to a near-halt.
That was when Nigeria announced the
2009 amnesty.

source please!!!!

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