Aside the fresh order handed to the military to crush pipeline vandals in the Niger Delta, president Muhammadu Buhari has dispatched a crack team of investigators to the oil rich region in a bid to unmask the faces behind a new notorious group called the Niger Delta Avengers.
The Niger Delta Avengers have become the saboteurs-in-chief of the federal republic.
The Avengers have claimed responsibility for the recent incineration of the Chevron Okan platform at Abiteye in Escravos, and the pipelines transporting crude oil to the Warri and Kaduna refineries. Few weeks before, the Avengers blew up Shell’s oil installation at Forcados, crippling Nigeria’s electricity and fuel output.
Punch reports that the Special Adviser to the president on Niger Delta affairs and coordinator of the amnesty program, Brig.-Gen. Paul Boroh (retd.), is leading the efforts from the presidency to unmask the perpetrators operating under the Avengers umbrella.
The Chief Security Officer to the Amnesty Office, Lt. Col. Olusegun Okungbure, told the newspaper over the phone on Sunday that the office was working with security agencies in the area by sharing information and intelligence on how to curb the sabotage of oil platforms in the region.
Okungbure stated that a meeting had also been scheduled between officials of the Delta State Government and stakeholders in the area on how to bring the attacks to an end.
He stated, “The Special Adviser has sent people to the region to see if we can identify the perpetrators of this act.
“Secondly, he has also condemned the attacks on all these oil platforms. He has also interfaced with the security agencies for the protection of the pipelines and security in the general area.
“Even as we speak now, we just finished a form of telephone conversation with the JTF Commander, who just returned from Delta State. These are some of the things we are doing.”
Okungbure added that the office had asked the ex-militants, captured under the Amnesty Programne, to assist in fishing out those behind the current attacks on the oil facilities.
He said the current attacks constituted a threat to the reputation of the 30,000 youths captured in the programme.
“We have even tasked the ex-agitators, the ones captured in the programme, that they should be able to fish out these people because their own reputation of embracing peace and accepting amnesty is being threatened by these kinds of attacks.
‘‘I think everyone is well aware of the implications,” he said.
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