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Ignore PANDEF group of old brigades, militants tell Nigerian govt as feud between Niger Delta stakeholders deepens

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THE Re-formed Niger Delta Avengers (RNDA) and a coalition of nine militant groups that ceased hostilities in 2016 have asked the Federal Government to disregard the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), declaring that the regional body does not represent the interest of the entire people of the oil-rich Niger Delta.

PANDEF National Chairman, Air Commodore Idongesit Nkanga (retd), had said recently that the Federal Government had halted talks on efforts to develop the region.

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) and other militant groups also said they were stopping hostilities to enable PANDEF to hold talks with the federal government on their demands for the development of the region.

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However, the Deputy National Secretary of PANDEF, Ken Robinson, has dismissed RNDA as a faceless group being used by fifth columnists to undermine the region.

And in a swift response, leader of RNDA, a breakaway faction of NDA, self-styled “Major General” Johnmark Ezonbi, in a statement, on Monday, berated PANDEF for saying that it might not mediate in the future.

The RNDA insisted that PANDEF did not broker any ceasefire agreement between the various groups in the region.

The statement read: “PANDEF’s position is totally shameful and disgraceful coming from the organized political forum made up of old brigades, who could be better described as tools of under development and who individually or collectively never contributed anything to the development of the Niger Delta region.

“PANDEF has been disbanded in the region long before now and does not have the power or the authority to enter into any form of negotiation either in the past or in the present with the federal government because their major aim is to promote violence and crisis in the creek of the Niger Delta.

“RNDA wants to remind members of PANDEF that President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC Federal Government cannot sit down and enter into negotiation with these set of old brigades, who obviously contributed to the decay of infrastructure in the country because they were part and parcel of the regime that wasted the nation’s 16 years under the PDP administration.”

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