Robin Hood or simple terrorist - of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta

[jelena grujic]

ISN Security Watch

26 March 2008
Niger Delta: 'Robin Hood' has a face

MEND's Henry Okah (MENDISN)
Image: MEND, ISN

A face has finally emerged as the mastermind - Robin Hood or simple terrorist - of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, whose militants have relentlessly attacked the oil industry, ISN Security Watch's Dulue Mbachu reports.

By Dulue Mbachu in Lagos, Nigeria for ISN Security Watch (26/03/08)

Armed militants that have attacked Nigeria's oil industry in the past two years under the banner of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND, cutting a quarter of the country's exports, have remained largely self-effacing, giving very little information about themselves or their leadership. On the few occasions MEND fighters met with journalists or released photographs of themselves and their hostages, they wore masks.

But an apparently unconnected arrest of two Nigerians at the airport in the Angolan capital, Luanda, in September on gun-running suspicions, eventually led back some 2,000 kilometers across Africa to MEND in Nigeria, at last putting a face to the best organized armed group in the country's restive oil region.

Henry Okah, a 42-year-old Nigerian and permanent resident of South Africa, who was arrested with a companion, Edward Atatah, is accused by the Nigerian authorities of being the mastermind and main sponsor of MEND as well as an arms supplier to several other groups in the troubled Niger Delta.

At the request of the government of Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua, Angola extradited Okah and Atatah to Nigeria in mid-February after five months of detention without charge and despite the lack of an extradition treaty between the top two oil producers in Africa. While they are yet to appear in court, prosecutors in Nigeria have since filed treason charges against both men, with the possibility of the death penalty on conviction.

"Since 2004, Okah has openly advocated armed struggle in the Niger Delta and facilitated armed struggle by supplying weapons of war to the militants, but always at a price," Salihu Aliyu, Nigeria's chief prosecutor, said in court statements.

Okah is accused of supplying arms to at least five different groups in the oil region. Prosecutors also allege that between 2003 and 2007, Okah convinced a major in the military in charge of an ordnance store in northern Nigeria to sell him 6,800 combat rifles and machine guns stolen from the military armory. Several officers are currently facing court martial for involvement in the alleged theft and sale of weapons.
MEND's Okah

However, MEND paints a different picture of the man, Okah.

While acknowledging him as a leader of the movement, the group has tried to distance him from their violent activities. MEND says Okah was closely involved in the peace process initiated by Yar'Adua's government, even meeting with Vice President Goodluck Jonathan during a trip to South Africa in August last year.

Following Okah's arrest the group called off the voluntary ceasefire it offered in the wake of initial negotiations between militants and the government. MEND accuses the government of being behind Okah's arrest in Angola on trumped up charges, pointing out that the Angolan authorities never charged him to court because there was no evidence against him.

"Okah is a respected youth leader and pillar of the now crumbled Niger Delta peace process," a spokesman of MEND who goes by the name of Jomo Gbomo, told ISN Security Watch in an email interview.

While the Angolan and Nigerian authorities say that Okah and Atatah had negotiated armed purchases in Angola, MEND insists they had gone to inspect a vessel they wanted to buy for their marine business. That vessel, Nigerian prosecutors say, was meant to transport weapons both men planned to procure.

A significant factor in Okah's arrest has been his apparent rivalry with another Niger Delta militia leader, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari. Dokubo-Asari came to prominence in 2004 when his Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force took up arms and fought government troops around the oil industry hub of Port Harcourt. Threats by Dokubo-Asari to wage all out war against the oil industry helped push oil prices above US$50 for the first time in 2004.

Following talks held with the then-government of Olusegun Obasanjo, Dokubo-Asari agreed to disarm. But he was arrested a year later and charged with treason after he said in an interview he would fight for the disintegration of Nigeria.

Dokubo-Asari's arrest and treason trial spawned another round of armed violence in the oil region by sympathetic militia groups. When MEND emerged in late 2005, among its key demands was the release of Dokubo-Asari and local control of the oil wealth produced in the region. President Yar'Adua, who succeeded Obasanjo in May 2007, freed Dokubo-Asari within a month of assuming office to pave the way for peace efforts.

Since his release, Dokubo-Asari has made speeches accusing Okah of using his access to weapons to manipulate and control the various militant groups active in the region for profit. Okah had supplied weapons to his group at one time but held back supplies at another occasion, while encouraging a rival militia leader to attack him, Dokubo-Asari said. Not only that Okah's "prices were steep, his timing was unreliable," Dokubo-Asari said in one speech.

MEND was formed in 2005, says Dokubo-Asari, by a coalition of armed groups of ethnic Ijaw extraction - the biggest of the ethnic minorities inhabiting the oil region - in response to his imprisonment and included fighters from his Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force. Following that meeting deep in the creeks of the western delta, Okah was appointed the group's e-mailer - a task he was asked to perform from his base in South Africa, but tried to seize the organization for his own purposes using his access to weapons, claims Dokubo-Asari.

Okah was also alleged by Dokubo-Asari to have planned a military expedition to overthrow the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in March 2005, and was behind "a legacy of criminality" that included bank robberies and hostage-taking for ransom. Dokubo-Asari said he personally thwarted the plan to invade Equatorial Guinea by informing the Nigerian security forces who intercepted the group while already on the way.

Some of the allegations made by Dokubo-Asari have appeared among the 14 counts of treason and conspiracy filed by the state against Okah. MEND discountenances all the allegations as unfounded and trumped up, holding up Okah as a hero of the Niger Delta rebellion against the Nigerian government and oil industry partnership, which they accuse of usurping their oil wealth, destroying their environment and impoverishing their people.
Robin hood?

Nigeria is the world's eight-biggest oil exporter, with nearly half of its production going to the US. Disruptions caused by unrest in the oil region have helped propel world oil prices to current historic highs.

Okah, the son of a retired navy officer who lived most of his life in Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, was shocked during his first visit to the Niger Delta as an adult to see the level of poverty that prevailed in the region, friends and relations say.

Okah, who trained as a marine engineer and worked in the national shipping company for many years, subsequently became active in the various groups campaigning for more access to the oil wealth for ethnic minorities that inhabit the oil region.

"The charges against him were lifted from accusations made out of jealousy from a document released by a now-repentant Dokubo-Asari," Charles Okah, his younger brother who works in the oil industry, told ISN Security Watch in an email. "The government cannot support their claims and the charges of treason."

Okah now joins a growing list of leaders from the Niger Delta who has faced charges that carry the death penalty over their activism. They include Isaac Boro who led the first armed rebellion in the region in 1966 and won a reprieve after conviction; Ken Saro-Wiwa, who led a non-violent campaign against the oil companies but was hanged after a flawed murder trial; and Dokubo-Asari who was freed to facilitate peace in the oil region.

Oil industry analysts in Nigeria believe the best prospects for peace in the region, which accounts for nearly all of the country's oil production, is still through negotiations with influential activists and addressing the region's poverty.

MEND, which called off its temporary ceasefire after Okah's arrest in Angola, has threatened to further escalate violence. It claims responsibility for explosions which tore through five navy boats at a military base in the oil industry hub of Port Harcourt on Friday, 21 March, killing two sailors.

MEND remains solidly behind Comrade Henry Okah," the militant group said in a recent statement. "The day of his release is the date a new ceasefire paving the way for dialogue will commence with immediate effect."

Dulue Mbachu is a correspondent for ISN Security Watch based in Nigeria. He has reported Nigeria for international media outlets including The Washington Post and the Associated Press.