ABUJA, Nigeria – The leader of militia fighters threatening to widen a battle for control of Nigeria’s oil-rich south said Wednesday he agreed to a tentative deal with President Olusegun Obasanjo to end fighting in Africa’s leading petroleum exporter that has riled global oil markets.
Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, who heads the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, said the president gave “an express understanding that no troops will attack our people. And as along as they don’t attack, we won’t attack.”
Dokubo-Asari, who claims direct control of 2,000 ethnic Ijaw fighters and the loyalty of tens of thousands more, threatened Tuesday to widen his campaign to control of the nation’s southern Niger Delta region and warned his forces would target foreign oil firms and their workers starting Friday.
A military spokesman called that threat “empty” and independent analysts questioned whether the militia could match one of Africa’s best-equipped militaries. Major oil companies played down the warnings, saying the threats wouldn’t seriously affect exports and no staff would be ordered to pull out.
Still, the threats helped send crude-oil prices to historic highs – over $50 per barrel in global markets – on Tuesday. Nigeria, a member of OPEC, is Africa’s leading oil producer and exporter, the world’s seventh-largest crude exporter and fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports.
Information Minister Chukwuemeka Chikelu confirmed Dokubo-Asari was in Abuja as part of government efforts to prevent deterioration of the security in the Nigeria Delta region, where the lion’s share of Nigeria’s 2.5 million barrels of oil are pumped daily.
Dokubo-Asari said a government plane had flown him to Abuja from the oil city of Port Harcourt.
He described the talks as “very cordial” and said they would continue in the evening in hopes of reaching a firm agreement.
Dokubo-Asari is seen as a folk hero by many poor residents who complain they have never shared in the country’s vast oil wealth. He claims to be fighting for self-determination in the region and greater control over oil resources for more than 8 million Ijaws, the dominant tribe in the southern delta region.
The government dismisses Dokubo-Asari’s group as criminals, accusing them of illegally siphoning oil from pipelines.
Widespread violence in the region often results in severe disruptions to oil operations. In March 2003, fighting between rival ethnic militia groups in the west of the Niger Delta, near the oil port city of Warri – which also drew in government troops – forced oil companies to shut down 40 percent of Nigeria’s oil exports for several weeks.
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