Jomo Gbomo, one of the regular spokesmen for MEND has just this weekend sent another 2 e-mails showing that attcks are not only going to continue, but escalate after the recent success of the militants in shutting down the Bonga, previously thought untouchable because of its distance offshore (around 70nm):
From: Jomo Gbomo
Sent: Saturday, June 21, 2008 4:25 PM
Subject: Chevron Pipeline Attack
Heeding the MEND call to sabotage oil installations in oil producing communities, a group of angry youths have contacted us giving details of their involvement in the sabotage of the Chevron Abiteye-Olero crude pipeline.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta wishes to commend these patriotic youths who we are now empowering with more powerful explosives and new techniques to destroy additional pipelines inside Delta state.
The government still has time to save face by releasing Henry Okah to partake in a genuine peace process before Nigeria's oil export reaches zero.
Yar'Adua should not be deceived by the criminals within the armed forces who are pushing him to enter into a fight for their own selfish interest as we don't see how the military can emerge victorious in guerrilla warfare and tactics.
For decades we have been deceived and exploited by the criminal Nigeria state. To those youths who are willing to fight for freedom, MEND welcomes you.
Long Live the Niger Delta!
Jomo Gbomo
From: Jomo Gbomo
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 7:35 PM
Subject: Declaration of War!
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) considers the empty threat made by an illegal commander-in-chief of an inept armed forces of Nigeria as a joke.
For underrating our capabilities, the military has been ridiculed world wide after the attack on Bonga. If they want to further expose their weaknesses, then we challenge them to launch an attack on any of our positions.
An attack on any militant position is tantamount to a declaration of oil war. The type of war they are expecting is far from what we plan to engage in.
In order to avoid being caught in a cross fire, we are asking all expatriate oil workers to vacate oil facilities and living quarters in the Niger Delta while we settle our score with an insincere Federal government.
We call on all patriotic youths in the region to sabotage oil facilities in your communities while those willing to be trained to fight are welcome in our training camps. Any community close to MEND camps that harbours security operatives or spies does so at thier risk and such traitors will be punished.
Long live the Niger Delta!
Jomo Gbomo
Meanwhile, it's highly probable that highly qualified graduates will soon help the government in getting out of this mess if yesterday's report by the News Agency of Nigeria of a speech by the General manager of Agip is anything to go by
The General Manager, Nigerian Agip Oil Exploration, Mr. Richard Ogunde, on Friday in Ijebu Ode, Ogun State said Nigeria’s oil reserve had only 43 years to dry up.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Ogunde made the disclosure in a lecture at the Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun, Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State. Quoting from the latest World oil data, Ogunde said Nigeria’s reserve remained 36.2 billion barrels.
He said in the lecture, titled “Petroleum Exploration, The Economy and Science Education,” that Nigeria had a yearly oil production capacity of 2.3bn barrels.
The oil expert advised government to start looking for other oil reserves. He urged the Federal Government to seek other means of sustenance after oil might have disappeared, “especially now that we have abandoned agriculture.”
The geophysicist accused successive governments of conniving with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation to misdirect, mismanage and mis-apply the country’s oil revenue without commensurate infrastructure growth. He criticised the NNPC for engaging in the direct sale of petroleum products by setting up retail outlets in different parts of the country.
Ogunde, who said that Nigeria had remained “poor despite our being rich in oil dollars simply because some people are just habitual bad managers of the nation’s resources,” regretted that the country still suffered from poor energy supply after the exploration of oil for over five decades.
He said, “Unfortunately, if there is no electricity, you cannot develop infrastructure. When a nation fails to develop her infrastructure, there is no way her economy can grow.” He also described the graduates of oil-related courses from the Nigerian universities as “half-baked and unemployable.”
NAN quotes him as saying that many of the job-seeking graduates of Geology and Geophysics with high-class degrees did not even understand simple practical terms in oil exploration and processing. He said, “The situation was so bad that when I interviewed well over 200 of these so-called brilliant geologists and geophysicists, I found less than 10 of them worthy of consideration.”
Ogunde expressed regrets that his findings had also revealed that more than 99 per cent of the graduates were not ready to meet the difficult challenges existing in the oil industry, warning that “the sector does not have room for layabouts who professed to be super-graduates.”