Following the announcement by the Niger Delta Avengers to resume oil pipelines bombing due to what it termed the Federal government’s unseriousness to dialogue with the Niger Delta region on ameliorating their plights, another militant group, the Niger Delta Revolutionary Crusaders, NDRC, today, declared its backing on Avengers.
The group also ordered Chevron Nigeria Limited, Total, Mobil, Agip and Shell to vacate oil platforms in the region, warning that their “their safety can no longer be guaranteed by the gods of the rivers and land.”
Recall that Avengers which halted attacks on oil installations in the Niger Delta region, last year, following the appeal of the Niger Delta elders and leaders, renounced the ceasefire, last week, threatening it would resume bombing of the oil pipelines in the Niger Delta region.
Avengers, in a statement by the spokesperson, self-styled “Maj-General Murdoch Agbinibo, also disowned the Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, led by the former Federal Commissioner for Information, Chief Edwin Clark, ex-militant leader, Chief Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, and the Reformed Niger Delta Avengers, RNDA on their negotiations with the federal government.
Avengers had warned that its suspended Operation Red Economy would resume in the next few days, warning, “our next line of operation will not be like the 2016 campaign, which we operated successfully without any casualties.
This outing will be brutish, brutal and bloody, as we shall crush everything we meet on our path to completely put off the fires that burn to flair gas in our communities and cut every pipe that moves crude away from our region.”
However, CHIEF of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibo-Ete Ibas, had said that the Nigerian Navy had reinforced security measures to tackle the militant’s insurgency, sea pirates, kidnapping and illegal bunkering.
Ibas also urged the public not to panic because of the threat by militants, as the navy has the professional capacity to curtail the menace in the region
According to him, ‘‘We will work in collaboration with other sister security agencies to fight against pipeline vandalism, illegal oil bunkering and sea-piracy as well as protection of the international territorial waterways.”
