By Our Correspondent
Ex-militant leader, Israel Akpodoro, lambasted former President Goodluck Jonathan, over his alleged unholy fraternity with the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA and the Adaka Boro Avengers, ABA and their failed declaration of the Niger Delta State as boasted by the insurgents few weeks ago stating that it was shameful for the former President to have waited for this long to caution the armed group.
Akpodoro stated this today in a statement written and signed by him in Abuja and made available to our correspondent.
This is coming on the backdrop of threats occasioned by the ultimatum issued by the ABA to declare a sovereign state of Niger Delta on August 1, and subsequent suspension of same based on alleged intervention by political leaders in the region including former President Jonathan.
He lambasted the Ijaw-born former President noting that the true sponsors of the violence in the Delta were gradually being revealed after several failed efforts at denying knowledge of those behind the renewed insurgency in the region.
I further stated that his group, the National Coalition of Niger Delta Ex-Agitators, NCNDE-A has been vindicated by the latest revelation made by the ABA that the former President and a former Minister of Information, Chief Edwin Clark, were among those who called insurgents to halt their planned declaration of a sovereign state.
To the Urhobo-born ex-militant leader, Jonathan was an accomplice “who is privy to the operations of the violent group in the region” an act he described as shameful and unstatesmanlike.
On Chief Clark, Akpodoro said it was an open secret that the former Minister was hands in glove with Avengers saying the NCNDE-A has been proven to be an organisation of decent and honest people who say what they know.
“We once accused Jonathan of being behind the Avengers and his psychosomatic defenders came up shouting blue murder. With the latest revelations from ABA mentioning the same supposed statesmen in clandestine romance, as men and women of goodwill, how do we reconcile the revelations and the denials?
“In a sane clime, the duo of Jonathan and Clark would have been answering questions the secret service by now because his attack dogs are ever ready to stand up in his defence whether rightly or wrongly on the platter of ethnic delusion and chauvinism.” Adding that; why didn’t Jonathan tell the world what he knows about Avengers?
“I called on the FG to as a matter of urgency apprehend everyone suspected to overtly or covertly to be behind the ‘notorious groups’ and bring them to justice as he cautioned the administration to ignore the grandstanding posture of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, MEND noting that as presently constituted, that group has no specific direction and lack the needed cohesion to represent any person or group of persons in the region.
“Members of MEND are broke and are desperate to defraud the government in the name of midwifing an imaginary dialogue with the FG. That group is composed of idle, confused and lawless individuals who in their desperate bid for recognition remain in lack direction purpose other than stolen troubles in the region.
