Govt: Nigeria militant to give up rockets, gunboat

YENAGOA, Nigeria — A top militant commander in Nigeria’s oil-rich Delta region will surrender rocket launchers and gunboats Saturday in the biggest hand-over of weapons since a government amnesty began two weeks ago, a government official said.

Timiebi Koripamo-Agary, a spokeswoman for the government’s 60-day campaign said commander Ebikabowei “Boyloaf” Victor Ben will surrender along with many of his fighters but could not give exact figures.

“Boyloaf” was the commander of Bayelsa state for the region’s biggest armed group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. The group said he is free to surrender but that it will not take part in the amnesty because it does not address the region’s problems.

Militancy in the Delta has increased dramatically in recent years. Attacks and bombings have cut Nigeria’s production by around a million barrels of oil per day, allowing Angola to overtake Nigeria as the continent’s top oil producer.

On Friday, Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua said the amnesty as “a first step” in the government’s development agenda for the people of the Niger Delta.

Lauren Gelfand, an analyst at military intelligence magazine Jane’s Defense Weekly, said so far the weapons turned in seemed to be mostly assault rifles and bullets.

“What will be important is whether some of the militants’ larger-caliber weaponry will be turned in, things like the rocket-propelled grenades they often sling over their shoulders for propaganda and media photos, or one of the anti-aircraft weapons they are rumored to have,” she said.

During a previous amnesty attempt in 2004, the government paid well over the market price for a collection of rusting assault rifles: the militant groups who handed the arms in used the cash to buy better weapons.

Koripamo-Agary insisted the administration had learned from past mistakes and would not be paying for weapons this time.

“Instead, we are asking the boys what they want — to further their education, learn a trade, or take a microloan for a small business,” she said, adding some of the senior militants had expressed an interest in joining the oil and gas sector.

The men would be given an allowance of $13 a day during the amnesty period, she said, and then the costs of their future education, new business or further training picked up by the government, which has set aside roughly $64 million for the payments. Between 7,000 and 11,000 fighters are estimated to be in the creeks of the Delta, but only a few hundred have taken the amnesty so far.

Militancy has its roots in community protests over pollution that ruined fishing grounds and farms. The protests were ignored by successive governments or met with brutal violence. Communities began to arm themselves at the same time as payments by oil companies helped increase divisions between them, contributing to bloody interethnic battles.

With the advent of democracy in 1999, politicians fanned the flames by giving gangs cash and guns to help rig elections. The weapons were turned on the oil industry when the polls closed.

These days the web of connections between politics, criminal gangs and militant protesters is more tangled and dirty than the muddy roots of the Delta’s mangrove swamps. Some gangs are also involved in the lucrative theft of crude oil — known as bunkering. Campaigners say it is impossible for the large, slow “blood oil” barges to move around the creeks without military protection.

It is still unclear how the government will account for the money spent on the amnesty or how long payments will continue. A Freedom of Information bill, which would give Nigerians the right to know how their taxes and oil revenues are spent, has been kicking around the legislature since the end of military rule in 1999. The bill has been rejected twice this year already.