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Avengers arm reveal MEND agenda in dialogue with FG

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okah brothers
The move by government to engage Niger Delta militants in dialogue is still causing friction among the militant groups in the region.

The tension has been heightened, as a militant group, allegedly affiliated to the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA, Sunday, said the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, is only working for the freedom of Henry and Charles Okah.

The Ultimate Warriors were reacting to a statement earlier on Sunday by MEND, confirming that it had already begun preliminary talks with the Federal Government through oil companies and security agents on how to end the renewed militancy in the Niger Delta.

MEND also insisted that the talks do not involve those it called criminals like the Niger Delta Avengers and Internet militants.

However, the Ultimate Warriors  said MEND is only cashing in on the proposed dialogue so as to use itas an avenue to secure the release of its leader Henry Okah, who is in a South African jail, and his brother, Charles, who is being held at the Kuje Prison.

In a statement issued by its spokesman, Sibiri Taiowoh, the militant group insisted that it would not be part of the MEND Aaron Team 2, as there was no longer any militant group called MEND in the region.

Read also: MEND says Avengers, other criminals not involved in ongoing talks with FG 

The statement read: “Our attention have been drawn to statement credited to defunct MEND that is now an internet-based group of jobbers and we want to let the public know that the MEND that we know under which the likes of Tompolo, Boyloaf and other ex-warlords operated has since be disbanded by the group of ex-agitators who were registered under the Amnesty Programme.

“The sole aim of this so-called MEND and the flaunted Aaron Team is to get Henry Okah and Charles Okah pardon under the Presidential Amnesty Programme. But they have forgotten that the Okah brothers were actually the ones who tried to sabotage the amnesty programme initiated by late President Yar’Adua and former President Goodluck Jonathan.

“We are against the MEND Aaron Team arrangement because it is utterly against our mission and their aims is in conflict with ours.

“What they are pushing for is freedom for the Okahs which they trying to use to sabotage our agitations for resource control, rapid development, and freedom for the poor people of the Niger Delta.”

“MEND was nowhere when this new face of the struggle started so they should stop trying to lord over us. What is happening is that MEND is trying to leverage on the renewed crisis to press for the release of the Okahs through the Amnesty Programme which the duo failed to support at inception.

“We pity the statesmen that the so-called MEND is assembling under their concocted Aaron Team 2. It is better they all back out from the Aaron Team plot because the government is not prepare to commence the dialogue from their perspective.

“We are not going to hand it over to MEND to constitute team for us. If the government truly wants to dialogue; the grandstanding by the so-called MEND might be a clog. This is our position,” the statement further added.

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