Two militant groups in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta region on Sunday claimed responsibility for recent attacks on oil facilities.
The region is prone to armed militant violence and crude oil theft but until recently had remained relatively stable for years.
The relatively unknown Liberation Army of the Niger Delta and Bakassi (L.A.N.D. & B) said it and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) attacked a main oil supply line running to a terminal in Bayelsa State.
Local sources told AFP that the attacks occurred in the past week.
Nigerian oil firm Oando told the government-owned News Agency of Nigeria at the weekend that there were “three separate attacks on its pipelines over the past week.”
The militants said their actions were in reaction to President Bola Tinubu‘s recent declaration of a state of emergency in the oil-rich Rivers State.
Months of political infighting in the state culminated in Tinubu declaring a state of emergency last month, suspending State Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy Ngozi Odu, and elected members of the state legislature.
The declaration followed attacks on oil infrastructure in the state, with Tinubu accusing Governor Fubara of being complicit.
“The attacks signify the launch of a campaign to drive out of Rivers State usurpers of the people’s legitimate authority,” the militants said in a statement sent to journalists.
AFP was not able to verify the authenticity of the statement, which was mailed from a Yahoo account.
A return to restiveness in the region would hurt Tinubu’s economic reform plans.
The country is battling one of its toughest cost-of-living crises in decades, and its fragile economy has only recently started showing signs of recovery.
“This is a major trunk line, and every day it remains shut results in huge revenue loss, not just to the Federal Government, but also to the company and host communities,” Nigeria’s oil minister Heineken Lokpobiri said in a statement after visiting the site of the destruction earlier in the month.
While the L.A.N.D. & B has a low profile, the MEND wreaked havoc on Nigerian oil facilities in the 2000s. Its campaign for a fairer share of Nigeria’s multi-billion-dollar oil wealth for residents of the delta significantly reduced output until a 2009 government amnesty ended the unrest.
