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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
NIGERIA: Militia leader puts freeze on voluntary disarmament
LAGOS, 16 Nov 2004 (IRIN) - The leader of the main militia group in southern Nigeria's oil-rich delta said on Tuesday his group was halting the voluntary surrender of weapons it had begun under a government-brokered disarmament deal.
Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, who leads the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF), accused the government disarmament committee of exaggerating the number of weapons handed in by the Niger Delta Vigilantes (NDV), led by Ateke Tom, to enable his archrival to retain his weapons.
"The Ateke group submitted only eight rifles and they (the committee) said it was 600," Dokubo-Asari told IRIN. "They're not being sincere. They want him to keep his guns."
The NDPFV leader said his group would only resume disarming when the discrepancies they had observed in the process were straightened.
The disarmament committee, headed by the governor of Rivers State, Peter Odili, denied the militia leader's allegation. "It is not correct the committee has falsely credited Tom's group with 600 rifles," Emmanuel Okah, the governor's spokesman, told IRIN.
Okah said weapons attributed to the NDV included those already surrendered to the Rivers government under a cash-for-arms scheme before President Olusegun Obasanjo set up the disarmament committee in late September.
On Monday, Odili presided over the destruction of 854 rifles, 1,353 rounds of ammunitions, two hand grenades and 11 other explosives. Officials said 196 of the rifles came from Dokubo-Asari's group, while more than 600 came from Tom's militia.
The two militias had agreed to disarm at negotiations initiated by Obasanjo after Dokubo-Asari reacted to a government offensive by threatening to target the country's oil industry. The bulk of the 2.5 million barrels of crude oil Nigeria exports daily comes from the Niger Delta.
Dokubo-Asari claimed his group had more than 3,000 assault rifles, each worth at least US $1,800 and insisted that the government pay their full value.
Fighting between the NDPVF and the pro-government NDV, which drew in the army, killed more than 1,000 people in the past one year.
The violence stemmed largely from personal differences and disputes over control of the illegal trade in crude oil stolen from pipelines criss-crossing the delta's swamps, creeks and mangrove forests.
But Dokubo-Asari made himself popular among the impoverished inhabitants of the Niger Delta by demanding that they have more control over the oil wealth produced in their land.
In the past decade, the region has been racked by restiveness and violence that feed on the discontent of a people who feel they have been cheated out of the oil wealth but left to suffer its pollution and environmental degradation.
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004
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