A new twist has emerged from the crisis in the Niger Delta region as Ultimate Warriors of Niger Delta ( UWND) , an affiliate of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) , alleged on Sunday that the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) , which recently unveiled the names of some respected leaders from the region to negotiate on behalf of militants, is only working to free Henry and Charles Okah.
MEND had earlier in the day confirmed that it was in talks with the Federal Government to end attacks on oil pipelines in the Niger Delta region and urged the Federal Government to ignore NDA, whose members it described as criminals.
In their response to the characterization of NDA members as criminals by MEND, UWND accused it of only being interested in freeing its leader Henry Okah, who is presently languishing in a South African jail and his brother, Charles, who is being held at the Kuje Prison in Abuja.
The militant group said in a statement by Sibiri Taiowoh, its spokesman, that it would not be part of the MEND Aaron Team, as there was no longer any militant group called MEND in the region.
According to UWND, the current MEND otherwise called Aaron Team 2 was a concoction of the Okah brothers and family, adding that it has not given them (MEND) the go ahead to negotiate for them.
“Our attention have been drawn to statement credited to defunct MEND that is now an internet-based group of jobbers and we want to let the public know that the MEND that we know under which the likes of Tompolo, Boyloaf and other ex-warlords operated has since be disbanded by the group of ex-agitators who were registered under the Amnesty Programme.
“The sole aim of this so-called MEND and the flaunted Aaron Team is to get Henry Okah and Charles Okah pardoned under the Presidential Amnesty Programme. But they have forgotten that the Okah brothers were actually the ones who tried to sabotage the amnesty programme initiated by late President Yar’Adua and former President Goodluck Jonathan,” UWND said.
While accusing MEND of trying to sneak into the renewed militancy through the back door, the militant group added, “We are against the MEND Aaron Team arrangement because it is utterly against our mission and their aims is in conflict with ours.
“What they are pushing for is freedom for the Okahs which they trying to use to sabotage our agitations for resource control, rapid development, and freedom for the poor people of the Niger Delta.”
“MEND was nowhere when this new face of the struggle started so they should stop trying to lord over us. What is happening is that MEND is trying to leverage on the renewed crisis to press for the release of the Okahs through the Amnesty Programme which the duo failed to support at inception.
“We pity the statesmen that the so-called MEND is assembling under their concocted Aaron Team 2. It is better they all back out from the Aaron Team plot because the government is not prepare to commence the dialogue from their perspective.
“We are not going to hand it over to MEND to constitute team for us. If the government truly wants to dialogue; the grandstanding by the so-called MEND might be a clog. This is our position,”.
