A Niger Delta militant in full battle gear.
Fears of another internecine civil war loom large in Nigeria 42 years after the last civil war that claimed over one million lives and left over 20 million people as refugees. Over 1, 000 people have been killed and over 20, 000 others displaced when the ruthless troops of the Nigerian Armed Forces invaded the Niger Delta of Nigeria last week.
The Niger Delta region has been under siege as federal troops and militants engaged in bloody war over illegal oil bunkering and resource control of the oil rich south-south states of Nigeria.
The Joint Task Force (JTF) of the Nigerian Armed Forces declared total war on the rebel forces of Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and launched a land, sea and air operation on Gbaramatu Kingdom and other villages in the creeks of the Delta State after the militant rebels killed 10 military officers at Camp 5 in Oporoza. Several villages have been bombed and razed in the siege, but the guerrillas of MEND have been able to repel the 7000 troops, gunboats and jet bombers of the JTF.
Militants have been kidnapping oil workers and destroying oil installations of the multinational oil companies and reducing the production of crude oil by a quarter in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa and eighth largest oil producer in the world. The Niger Delta militants called freedom fighters want more control of their oil and gas and better life for the oil communities devastated by decades of both legal and illegal oil exploration.
As the federal troops continued the bombardment of rebel camps and villages in the creeks, leading human rights groups have sent peace delegations to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and other world leaders to persuade the Federal Government of Nigeria to end the siege to reduce the growing humanitarian crisis in the Niger Delta.
~ Orikinla Osinachi, reporting from Nigeria.
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