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Vol 50 No 15

Published 24th July 2009


Nigeria

Amnesty not honesty

The N50 bn. amnesty deal offers a respite but will not change the corruption and environmental despoliation that fire the conflict in the Niger Delta

The Niger Delta militants take an unorthodox approach to public relations. In the morning of 12 July they launched 'Operation Moses', detonating a bomb which devastated part of the Atlas Cove jetty in Lagos, killing five people. It was the first major operation the militants had launched outside the Delta and preceded their announcement of a 60-day ceasefire with the government. Also it showed the militants' capacity to strike key economic targets at will and do further damage to the chaotic fuel distribution network. The attack on Lagos coincided with the government's release of Henry Okah, a leading figure in the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, who had been on trial facing charges of gun-running and treason, following his arrest in Angola in September 2007.

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