Former militant and current leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, has warned that the North is preparing for war against the rest of the country.
Dokubo-Asari, who spoke yesterday in Abuja during a press conference, predicated his claim on certain comments from prominent northerners.
He was reacting to a statement credited to Alhaji Usman Bugaje, a northerner and All Progressives Congress, (APC) chieftain on Monday in Kano that the oil in the Niger Delta belongs to the North.
Bugaje had claimed at a meeting of the Northern Elders Forum in Kano on Monday that since 72% of the total land mass in the country belonged to the North and going by the United Nations (UN) law; only the North actually has the right to claim ownership in Nigeria and her oil.
“The landmass of this country, that gives that long 200 nautical miles or more into the ocean, is because of that 72% of the landmass of this country, which is the North.
The investment came from the Nigerian state and the territory belongs to the Nigerian state. What they claim is the offshore oil, which is actually the oil of the North. We should stop using these terms that have no sense at all.
There are no oil-producing states,” Bugaje had declared. Dokubo-Asari said Bugaje’s statement is a very serious and inciting one and as such he would treat the matter with all seriousness.
According to him, “I am calling on the Igbo people, the Niger Delta people, the Middle Belt, we must rise up to put a wall of defence and prepare ourselves for whatever they are planing, what they are planing will not be different from what Boko Haram is doing.
The killings in Benue, Jos is part of their plan, this we must understand.”
He called on security operatives to invite him for explanations in a bid to save Nigeria from the alleged northern war plan. Dokubo-Asari insisted that Bugaje was speaking for the entire North, which, according to him, sponsors the ravaging Boko Haram.
“The intention and implication of Bugaje’s statement is that the North is planning genocide against our people, the same way they’re sponsoring Boko Haram. That is the import of what Bugaje has said, people might not see it and they will say Asari is an alarmist.
“He spoke the mind of the North. They are deceiving and inciting their people against our people. What Bugaje did was to incite the people. But we are ready for them.
So, he could go on inciting his people; we are ready for everything they are planning. “What Bugaje said started when Ken Saro- Wiwa began the Ogoni struggle, and Bala Mohammed came out and said that the oil sedimented from the North to the South, as if the world is horizontal.
They are telling us they are hand-in-glove in this struggle to subjugate and steal what does not belong to them.” The former militant then asked security agents to invite Bugaje for interogation over the statement.
Noting that Bugaje was speaking for the North, he declared: “Bugaje was addressing a northern assembly, made up of the whole northern leadership, academia, business class and political elite, and before this gathering, Bugaje made such provocative and inciting comment that oil in the Niger Delta belongs to the North and his people clapped for him.”
Source: New Telegraph
