Former leader of Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari has warned that Niger Delta fighters are ready to take up arms to fight Boko Haram Islamists, and are holding back only out of respect for the president.
Dokubo-Asari, a Muslim who led a rebellion in the Delta until a peace deal with the government in 2004, said bomb attacks by Boko Haram could provoke retaliation by mostly Christian Southerners, including those living in the delta.
Asked if Northerners could be the in the south, he replied: “It is seconds away ... Nigeria is on the precipice of a civil war.”
“For Niger Delta, people to take up arms is just a minute away. Its just Goodluck that is holding us back,” said Asari. “We have all reached the extreme. There is nothing anybody can do about it except we fight.”
It would be recalled that the Asari-led Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, managed to push oil prices to record highs in 2004 with its constant attacks and threats against oil production in the Delta’s swampy creeks.
Since then, peace deals with the region’s warlords have pacified the Delta, and Boko Haram in the North has become the number one threat to Nigeria’s security.
Asari paused to read some Facebook posts from his iPad about the Christmas Day bombs.
Asari said, he was skeptical that the government could negotiate with moderate members of Boko Haram via “back channels” as National Security Adviser, General Owoye Andrew Azazi suggested in an interview with Reuters.
Sitting in his flat in the city of Port Harcourt, Asari said the group’s faceless nature, an issue General Azazi acknowledged, made talks impossible.
“If you cannot identify the people who are carrying out these attacks, how can you dialogue with them, interact with them, and bring them round the table?” He said.
In any case, such extreme violence meant the time for talks had passed, he said.
“You cannot ask government to negotiate now. On what basis? The government should...rein these people in, or the people will resort to self-help,” said Asari, who stressed where his loyalties lay despite being a Muslim: “Anybody that wants to start any revolution in Goodluck’s time, we the Ijaw will pull down that revolution,” he said.
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