With just one year in office, President Muhammadu Buhari’s draconian<\/p>\n
style of governance is unloading in many dimensions with the killing of
\nan undisclosed number of people in the Niger Delta Region of the country
\nby soldiers searching for militants bombing pipelines and fighting for
\nresource control.<\/p>\n
In the same vein, 15 members of the Indigenous People of Biafra group were
\nkilled by the police during a peaceful rally in Onitsha to commemorate
\nheroes of the 1967-1970 civil war to create a separatist state of Biafra
\nin South-east Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Associated Press (AP) said Deputy Superintendent Alphonsus Okechukwu
\ndenied the killing but eye-witness accounts confirmed the killings in
\nOnitsha.<\/p>\n
In the southern Niger Delta, soldiers encountered three speedboats
\nbelieved to be carrying militants on a mission to attack an oil
\ninstallation on Sunday and “opened fire on them, killing most of them and
\ninjuring others,” said a statement from army spokesman Col. Sani
\nKukasheka Usman.<\/p>\n
Earlier Sunday, militants in two other speedboats opened fire on soldiers
\nfrom an artillery regiment who responded with “overwhelming superior
\nfirepower” that injured an unknown number, he said.<\/p>\n
In another attack, on Saturday night, soldiers fired on a speedboat trying
\nto reach Oporoza to evacuate civilians wounded in the military’s siege of
\nthat town, according to the Ijaw Youth Council, a community group.<\/p>\n
The military’s offensive comes after the Niger Delta Avengers, a new
\ngroup, mounted three attacks in three days last week and warned of
\n“something big” to come.<\/p>\n
Community chieftain Elekute Macaulay said troops arrived at Oporoza before
\ndawn Saturday and were reinforced early Monday to widen a siege of the
\narea reachable only by water or air. He said half the 40,000 inhabitants
\nhave fled to the bush and creeks, and the others are afraid to come out of
\ntheir homes.<\/p>\n
The Ijaw council said it “strongly condemns this … brutalization of
\ninnocent residents.”<\/p>\n
Soldiers are demanding that villagers hand over fighters of the Avengers,
\nand its alleged leader Government “Tompolo” Ekpemupolo, said Chief
\nMacaulay. Tompolo has denied involvement with the Avengers but the attacks
\nbegan shortly after an arrest warrant was issued for his alleged theft and
\nsubversion of money from government contracts to guard oil installations.<\/p>\n
Oil militants are angry that the government is winding down a 2009 amnesty
\nprogram that paid 30,000 militants to guard the installations they once
\nattacked. They are demanding a bigger share of Nigeria’s oil wealth for
\nresidents of the Niger Delta, where hundreds of thousands of livelihoods
\nhave been destroyed by decades of oil pollution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With just one year in office, President Muhammadu Buhari’s draconian style of governance is unloading in many dimensions with the killing of an undisclosed number of people in the Niger…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n