WARRI – Nigerian militants detonated two car bombs outside a government building in the southern oil city of Warri yesterday where talks were being held about implementing an amnesty programme.
The attacks, claimed by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) militant group, are a major setback for acting president Goodluck Jonathan as his government also tries to calm ethnic tensions in the centre of the country.
Mr Jonathan has made reviving an amnesty programme and restoring peace in the Niger Delta, the heartland of Africa’s biggest oil and gas industry, a top priority since he took over as acting leader in the absence of the nation’s sick president.
The emancipation movement said the explosions were meant to “announce our continued presence” and warned of renewed attacks against the oil industry in the coming days, threatening firms such as French energy giant Total, which have so far largely avoided significant strikes on their infrastructure.
“It is quite a statement,” said Antony Goldman, a Nigeria expert and head of London-based PM Consulting. “Apparently with timed devices, they have sabotaged not just some lonely, impossible-to-guard pipeline, but an official government building on a relatively high-profile occasion.”
The first vehicle exploded on an expressway several hundred metres from the compound of Delta state governor Emmanuel Uduaghan, the second at the gates of the building. Witnesses said about six passersby were wounded.
Several hundred police officers and soldiers in armoured vehicles cordoned off Government House as cars burned on the expressway outside. Security was also tightened around the nearby offices of US energy giant Chevron.
Officials from states around the Niger Delta were meeting in Warri to discuss implementing the terms of an amnesty launched last year by President Umaru Yar’Adua, under which thousands of gunmen agreed to lay down their weapons.
The programme was the most concerted effort yet to end years of unrest which have prevented the Opec member from producing much above two-thirds of its three million barrels a day oil capacity, costing it about $1 billion a month in lost revenue.
However, the amnesty started to stall after Mr Yar’Adua left for three months of medical treatment in Saudi Arabia last November. He returned to Nigeria last month but remains too sick to govern and the programme has made little concrete progress. – (Reuters)