20091220
guardian

Militants say President Umaru Yar'Adua's absence in Saudi Arabia is being used to delay oil wealth reforms



Claims by Nigerian militants that they staged an attack on an oil installation, breaching a five-month ceasefire, have deepened fears that the country is on the verge of a constitutional crisis.

Nigeria, which in 1999 ended a 40-year era of military dictatorship, is in the midst of a power vacuum in the absence of President Umaru Yar'Adua, who has been in hospital in Saudi Arabia for more than three weeks.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) claimed that its fighters, armed with rocket launchers and machine-guns, had carried out a "warning strike" against a pipeline at Abonemma in Rivers state. There was no independent confirmation of the attack. Mend said it struck because the government was using Yar'Adua's absence to stall negotiations promised as part of an amnesty programme. The group said it would review an indefinite ceasefire it offered on 25 October.

The densely populated Niger delta has been the scene of conflict for 20 years, amid calls from its ethnic groups for a greater share of vast oil earnings. The most celebrated victim of the government's clampdown against the minorities was author Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed with eight other Ogoni activists in 1995.

If confirmed, Friday night's attack would be a major blow to peace efforts by Yar'Adua's administration, which in July pledged to spend millions of pounds developing the region and offered host communities a 10% share in all oil and gas operations.

The proposal convinced thousands of activists to accept a presidential amnesty, which ended in October. But the plan is politically unpopular and has raised eyebrows among oil multinationals because it demands a huge programme of reform and a major audit of the delta's oil wealth.

Nevertheless, multinationals admit that, since the amnesty offer and ceasefire, production had increased. Mend attacks over the past three years have prevented Nigeria from extracting more than two thirds of its capacity.

A Mend statement yesterday suggested that the group believed the government was using the president's illness as a stalling tactic. "While the government has conveniently tied the advancement of talks on the demands of this group to a sick president, it has not tied the repair of pipelines, exploitation of oil and gas, as well as the deployment and retooling of troops in the region to the president's health," it said in a statement to news agencies. "A situation where the future of the Niger delta is tied to the health and wellbeing of one man is unacceptable."

Yar'Adua, 58, is receiving treatment for a heart complaint and has failed to formally hand power to vice-president Goodluck Jonathan. Speculation is rife in the capital, Abuja, that a power struggle has begun in the ruling People's Democratic party or that junior officers could be planning a move.

Nigeria's fragile power balance has traditionally depended on rotating presidencies between the Muslim north and the south. Jonathan, a Christian from Rivers state in the south, is seen by analysts as an unacceptable choice in the eyes of the northern elite from which Yar'Adua comes.