₦airaland Forum

chivic:
just as I never supported Jonathan to visit the North east during the hay days of Boko Haram, I also do not sopport Buhari to visit Ogoni land for now. It's not cowardice bit wisdom.

Flexherbal:
That is not wise at all.

989900:
Most of our leaders have actually lived overseas, some with foreign passports even. From Bankole, to Saraki, Ajimobi, NOI, and tons of them.

Flexherbal:
He should have thought of this before making the promise.

– What’s the government response?

Buhari said last weekend he is going to “re-engineer” the amnesty programme, which could be an olive branch to the militants.

At the same time, however, he is sending more troops to the creeks and swamps of the Niger delta region.

There are fears a heavy-handed response will breed more discontent and attract more people to join the Avengers.

Nigeria has been hit by growing unrest in the country’s oil-producing south by a new militant group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers.

Here is what is known about them:

– What’s the story so far? –

The Avengers describe themselves as young, well-educated “worthy outlaws” and have since early 2016 been attacking Nigeria’s oil and gas infrastructure, helping drag production to 20-year lows.

They demand an independent state and want international oil companies out of the region.

– Who are they? –

“Even the Nigerian security services are not 100 percent sure what they are up against,” Dirk Steffen, from the Denmark-based Risk Intelligence firm, told AFP.

Still, given their ability to execute attacks on critical oil and gas infrastructure, it’s likely some members were part of former militant organisations, he added.

But the group’s level of organisation is under debate.

“The Avengers may not be a defined group of people, except for a core of maybe 100-150 people or so,” said Steffen.

– Why now? –

In 2009, Nigeria reached a ceasefire with militant groups which previously disrupted oil production and introduced an amnesty programme.

That gave former rebels a monthly stipend and jobs training in the oil industry as welders, divers and technicians.

But after the economy took a nosedive following the crash in global oil prices, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has struggled to pay for the amnesty programme.

He has even hinted at winding it down, making some 30,000 ex-militants on the payroll angry.

He has also ended lucrative security contracts with former militants to protect pipelines.

– What else?

Buhari, from the majority Muslim north, has charged prominent politicians and ex-militants from the oil-rich mostly Christian south with corruption.

That’s stoked longstanding animosity between the north and the south — an opposition stronghold — with some criticising his anti-graft fight as a “political witch-hunt”.

– What makes them different? –

Like previous militant groups, the Avengers want a greater share of oil revenue, amnesty payments, and clean-up and compensation for spills.

But they also have a series of political demands that culminate in the creation of an independent Niger Delta state.

They demand the release of pro-Biafra leader Nnamdi Kanu, who has been imprisoned on charges of “treasonable felony”, and say members of Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) should face corruption trials like the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

– Who supports them? –

“The Avengers and other groups that have popped up in recent months are likely getting some support from former and current PDP members,” Philippe de Pontet, Sub-Saharan Africa analyst at risk consultancy firm Eurasia Group, said in a recent report.

“It was always expected that there would be backlash to the Buhari administration in the region. If anything, the surprise is that the first 10 months of Buhari’s term were as quiet as they were.”

– What have they attacked? –

The Avengers’ attack on Shell’s Forcados underwater flow line in February used divers, showing they have the skills and knowledge of oil infrastructure to target areas that will significantly halt production.
Other attacks include the sabotage of Chevron’s offshore Okan gas valve platform, and bombings of Eni’s infrastructure and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) pipelines, which provide gas to Lagos for power generation.

– Why does it matter? –

Nigeria has budgeted for production of 2.2 million barrels per day this year but the attacks have cut output to 1.4 million bpd, according to the country’s junior oil minister Emmanuel Kachikwu.

The sabotage couldn’t have come at a worse time, with Nigeria, which normally depends on oil export sales for 70 percent of government revenue, on the brink of a recession.

Internationally, Nigeria’s oil disruption — along with unrest in Libya and wildfires in Canada — has pushed up the price of the commodity around the world.

– What’s the government response?

Buhari said last weekend he is going to “re-engineer” the amnesty programme, which could be an olive branch to the militants.

At the same time, however, he is sending more troops to the creeks and swamps of the Niger delta region.

There are fears a heavy-handed response will breed more discontent and attract more people to join the Avengers.

Mynd44:
Where ?

ChukwuIbrahim:
4K hia...

In Sambisa

godoluwa:
Its unfortunate

ITbomb:
More like Hydra

mysteriousman:
In time everyone will see the light he was initially blind to what was happening in the government now his perception about PMB has changed.

I look at what is on the ground and, of course, wherever I can intervene, I do both privately and publicly.”

NOBEL laureate Prof Wole Soyinka has said it would take time for President Muhammadu Buhari to clear the rot he inherited from his predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, whose administration, he believed, left a “heavy baggage” and “burden” that may take a while to tackle.

But, the playwright urged President to sustain efforts at improving the economy. He spoke in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The literary icon was scheduled to speak at a public lecture on the theme: Politics, Culture and the New Africa.

He said: “This (Buhari) administration has inherited a heavy baggage. While I am critical in some aspects of the priority, I think that to clear up the mess left by previous administrations is going to take quite a while, especially in the economy sector. So, I don’t use words like optimism or pessimism; I’m just pragmatic. I look at what is on the ground and, of course, wherever I can intervene, I do both privately and publicly.”

Also speaking, another renowned author, Prof Kole Omotoso, said the Buhari administration had tackled a number of things, but added that the President must intensify his effort to alleviate the suffering of the people.

“We are going in the right direction but in the process, we need to do so many things. We need to look at not just the suffering of the people but the way people seem to indulge in bearing suffering. It is as if even if you try to solve the problem for them they will prefer to be suffering and smiling,” Prof Omotoso said.

muri4mig:
This is one area that this Government is not doing well...the handling of the economy

Amby Uneze in Owerri

Governor of Imo State, Chief Rochas Anayo Okorocha, has denied the posters in Abuja and other Northern states having the Governor of Borno State, Alhaji Kashim Shettima, announcing his intention to run for the 2019 presidency with Rochas as the deputy.

He described it as the handiwork of his detractors.

In a release signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Sam Onwuemedo, it said that the governor sees the posters as another mischief by obviously some mischievous elements cowed by his monumental achievements in Imo and what he represents in the politics of the South-East and Nigeria in general today.

According to the release, those behind this mischief first invaded the social media with the fake posters and when they discovered that the comments by decent men and women had all doubted the source and the genuineness of the posters, they decided to paste them in Abuja.

It said: “On the part of the Imo State Governor, it is very difficult to capture what the folks behind this pettiness want to achieve or what must have prompted them, in the first place. Soon after the 2015 election, and knowing the leading role Governor Okorocha played in the South-East that put the PDP field Commanders on their toes, which prevented them from returning the kind of election figures they had returned in 2011 in the zone, and knowing that by virtue of that key role, Governor Okorocha should expectedly reap largely from the President Mohammadu Buhari’s government, they began their campaign of calumny against the Imo Governor.”

BayLord01:
But why Avengers no come out to confront our gallant troops now?