The struggle for justice in the Niger Delta in context.
Lagos/Warri/Asaba — Seven days to the deadline for militants to drop their arms and accept amnesty, Abuja at the weekend warned that none would be treated with mercy after October 4.
Defence Minister and Amnesty Panel Chairman, Godwin Abbe, has reportedly foreclosed extending the deadline, as requested by some militant leaders.
A source in Aso Rock said unrepentant militants would be treated like criminals once the amnesty expires.
There is mounting evidence that the government of Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’adua is set to launch a full-scale offensive in the Niger Delta when a ceasefire declared by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) ends on 15 Sep 2009.
And this time, Nigerian military forces will be using special warships, helicopter gunships and troop transports, and unmanned drone intelligence planes and ships sold to Nigeria by Israeli, Malaysian, Singaporean, Dutch, and Russian companies.
The military deploys about 10 gun boats and other military hardware into Okerenkoko community. The invasion by the military, which is resisted by villagers, claims about 20 lives and three soldiers. The conflict emerges out of a disagreement between the military and some youths in the territory: the youth claim the military was involved in illegal oil dealing; the military claim they are trying to arrest locals involved in oil theft.
Women from several ethnic groups (Ijaw, Urhobo and Itsekiri) in Delta state put ethnic rivalry aside and join together to claim better living conditions, proper compensation for the communities living on lands that host oil exploitation and a sustainable means of living for their families. The unarmed women peacefully occupy the gates of the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and Chevron Nigeria Limited in Warri, Delta State on August 8, 2002.
Itsekiri women protest the excruciating socio-economic condition in the delta region by peacefully and non-violently taking over a ChevronTexaco airstrip at Escravos export terminal in Delta state and occupying the place for ten days with a promise to leave only on the condition that their demands for better conditions of life for citizens of the Niger Delta are met. The women were forcefully ejected from the platform, and some of them brutalized, by the military men invited by ChevronTexaco to intervene.
Odi, an oil-bearing community in Bayelsa State is razed to the ground by Nigerian military troops and about 2,483 persons - mainly women, children and the elderly-- are massacred on the order of President Olusegun Obasanjo. The reason given by the government for the invasion: some 9 police officers that had gone into the community to arrest a notorious gang in the state, but were allegedly killed by the gang. The President threatened to declare a state of emergency within 14 days.
Opia and Ikeyan villages of Delta State are razed in circumstances linking the American oil giant, Chevron. In the invasion carried out by Nigerian soldiers paid and ferried in Chevron helicopters, scores of people are killed and the communities are completely destroyed.
