Just hours after Nigeria's Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) announced its 60-day truce, promising to prepare for negotiations, ("...wise men and women will be put
together after consultations with relevant stakeholders. They will
speak on our behalf and convey our demands to government.")... they may be changing their minds.
E-mailed to this blogger from spokesman alias Jomo Gbomo at 7:49am EST:
Barely 12 hours into our ceasefire, the military Joint Task
Force has dispatched seven gun boats with heavily armed troops from
Warri and are headed towards one of our camps located around the
Delta/Ondo state border.
If this information from a very reliable source within the JTF
happens to be true, the ceasefire will be called off with immediate
effect.
We are monitoring the armada and sincerely hope that the planned attack will be converted to a war exercise.
Well shoot. I don't think that's the deal that the Nigerian government was hoping for when they released notorious rebel leader
Henry Okah yesterday, after his two-year detention for gun-running.
There's two other things to mention here:
1) While the official militant media announcements are a fairly acurate indicator of rebel activity in the Niger Delta, MEND does not speak for all of the armed fighters in the region -- not by a long shot. In recent years, the insurgency has been plagued by a war of conflict opportunism. There's quite a few boys in the creeks who are fighting for a profit as much as for MEND.
2) In case no one else has noticed... all this puts Nigeria on the rocks. Unofficial estimates from some sources on ground tell me that oil production has been cut drastically in recent weeks thanks to militant attacks -- a huge blow to a government already suffering from the budgetary burden of relatively low-priced oil.
Ceasefire or not, there's no calm forthcoming.
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