UK warns Buhari: Using military confrontation in Niger

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari needs
to address grievances in the Delta region
where militants have been blowing up oil
pipelines in a conflict that has become a
“major concern”, a senior British official said
yesterday.
The swamps of the southern Delta have been
hit by a series of attacks on pipelines and
other oil and gas facilities that have reduced
Nigeria’s output by 300,000 barrels a day,
closed a major export port and two refineries.
Nigeria has moved in army reinforcements to
hunt the militants but British Foreign Minister
Philip Hammond said Buhari needed to the
deal with the root causes because a military
confrontation could end in “disaster”.
Crude sales from the Delta account for 70
percent of national income in Africa’s biggest
economy but residents, some of whom
sympathise with the militants, have long
complained of poverty.
“It’s obviously a major concern,” Hammond
told reporters on the sidelines of a regional
security conference in Abuja when asked
about the Delta situation.
“The idea that your answer is by moving big
chunks of the Nigerian army to the Delta
simply doesn’t work,” he said, adding that the
army did not have the capacity while fighting
Boko Haram jihadists in the north. “It won’t
deal with the underlying issues.”
“Buhari has got to show as a president from
the north that he is not ignoring the Delta,
that he is engaging with the challenges in the
Delta,” Hammond said.
Buhari is a Muslim from the north who has
not visited the Christian Delta since taking
office a year ago, something highlighted by a
militant group, the Niger Delta Avengers,
which has claimed a string of attacks on
pipelines.
The group has warned oil firms to leave the
region within two weeks and says it is fighting
for independence for the Delta. It has said it
wanted a greater share of oil revenues and an
end to oil pollution.
The attacks have driven Nigerian oil output to
near a 22-year low and, if the violence
escalates into another insurgency, it could
cripple output in a country facing a growing
economic crisis.
Buhari, who has not commented about not
visiting the Delta, has extended a multi-
million dollar amnesty signed with militants in
2009 but upset them by ending generous
pipeline protection contracts.
He also cut the amnesty budget by around 70
percent, which partly funds training for
unemployed.