New militant group, ‘Niger Delta Red Squad’ strikes oil pipeline, threaten soldiers

• Threatens to behead soldiers, attack Okorocha’s home

The militant group, Niger Delta Red Squad, operating in the Ohaji-Egbema axis of Imo State has bombed an Agip Petroleum pipeline at Uzo-Oru Ikwerede in Awarra community of Ohaji-Egbema council area of Imo state. Posting the attack on their Facebook wall yesterday, the group warned Agip personnel to keep away from the pipeline as anybody found within the area would be beheaded.

The group also threatened to attack Governor Rochas Okorocha’s Ogboko village if government eventually deploys any military taskforce to their community which they claim is relatively peaceful.

According to the post, the group said that their community, particularly the Awarra Court area, has nothing to show for the operations of Agip, SPDC and other oil companies in their community since the creation of Imo State. It read in part:

“We have crude oil, gas, palm oil, rubber estate, which we use to put food in the basket of Imo State, yet we don’t benefit anything from Imo State or the oil companies in our commu-nity.

We have seen enough marginalization and it has to be stopped.” Continuing, the group said, “To Imo State government and their security agencies, we ask you to give our people what rightfully belong to them.

You think the best thing you can do is to plan on how to deploy security men to our area. No problem, Rochas Okorocha, we are assuring you that no security agent will come to any part of Awarra and go without being beheaded”.

The group averred that there is no crisis in their community, warning that there will be no peace for anybody that brings crisis to their community. “Since you don’t want our parents to have peace, your own people will not have peace and we will start it from Ideato; we will turn their children to orphans and their parents to widows and widowers,” the group said.

When contacted, the Imo State Commissioner for Information, Tourism and Public Utilities, Dr. Vitalis Orikeze Ajumbe, said that the state government is not aware of the said incident.

He said, “The information has not reached us. It is not true. That’s the government position on it. We don’t have the security report of such incident. Until we get a security report on it, it does not exist.”