FG DECLARES MANHUNT FOR PIPELINE VANDALS

The Federal Government has deployed officials to uncover those behind the recent bombings of oil installations in the Niger Delta region.

A new militant group in the oil-rich region, the Niger Delta Avengers, claimed responsibility for the recent attacks on the SPDC platform at Forcados, the Chevron Okan platform at Abiteye in Escravos, and the pipelines transporting crude oil to the Warri and the Kaduna refineries.


The group vowed to carry out more strikes until its demands are met.

In a statement issued, the Niger Delta Avengers say they want to ensure that local people enjoy a quality of life, which reflects the region’s contribution to the national purse.

This comes just days after President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to crack down on “vandals and saboteurs”.

The Nigerian military has also vowed to deal decisively with the new onsluaght on oil and gas facilities in the Niger Delta by alleged militants.

Director of Defence Information, Brigadier-general Rabe Abubakar, who declared this on Saturday, described the recent attacks on the oil infrastructure as the unpatriotic and callous handiwork of criminal gangs.

Pipeline attacks and violence have risen in Nigeria’s oil rich region since authorities issued an arrest warrant in January for Government Ekpemupolo also known as Tompolo, a former militant leader on corruption charges.

As part of the efforts in security and government circles to identify the masterminds of the attacks on the oil facilities, the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta, Brig.-Gen. Paul Boroh (retd.), has dispatched a team of investigators to the Niger Delta.

The government is also focused on ensuring that militancy does not return to the region.

The Delta’s oil provides 70 percent of state income in Africa’s biggest economy but, like much of Nigeria, the region has seen little development which has prompted militants to demand a greater share of crude revenues.

Buhari has extended a multi-million dollar amnesty signed with militants in 2009 but upset them by ending generous pipeline protection contracts.

Since the attack on the Forcados plant, several attacks have followed suit in the region.

The hits follow years of relative calm in the country’s oil-producing region after a 2009 amnesty halted a spate of attacks on oil installations and kidnappings of expatriate workers.

Following the amnesty, many former leaders enriched themselves through lucrative pipeline protection contracts under previous president Goodluck Jonathan but oil theft reached an industrial scale.

President Buhari cannot afford to start a conflict in the south with the military already stretched in the northeast fighting the Islamist jihadi group Boko Haram.

Earlier this year, Nigeria’s state oil company was forced to shut down its Kaduna and Port Harcourt refineries following an attack on pipelines bringing crude to the plants, TV360 reports.

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