Nigerian general removed
08/03/2006 19:53  - (SA)  

Oil militants attack again Blasts shake Nigerian armoury Officers face coup plot

Lagos - The commander of a military task force deployed in the Niger Delta to protect Nigeria's oil industry has been removed from his post, said officials on Wednesday.

The region has been plagued by violence for the past two months.

Since the start of the year, separatist guerrillas have attacked oil export facilities, killed more than 20 government soldiers and kidnapped 13 foreign oil workers, three of whom are still being held hostage in the delta swamps.

On Wednesday, a military spokesman confirmed that Brigadier-General Elias Zamani, commander of a joint military task force based in the oil port of Warri, had been transfered to duties outside the oil-producing region.

"General Zamani has been redeployed. It is not as if he committed any offence," said defence headquarters spokesperson, Group Captain Eniola Akinduro.

"It is a routine military exercise. The general has been in that post for more than two years. It is normal that he be moved to another area now," he added.

Ethnic Ijaw militants - who last month accused Zamani of escalating the crisis by ordering helicopter gunship strikes on oil-smuggling barges in the delta creeks - welcomed the decision, but said it did not go far enough.

Don't want a garrison

Oboko Bello, head of the radical Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities (FNDIC), said talks to secure the hostages' release would progress faster if the general's transfer was followed by the removal of his task force.

"We're a civilian community. We don't want this level of garrison," he said from Warri, where he is a member of a committee set up by Delta state governor James Ibori to arrange the release of the hostages.

On February 18, ethnic Ijaw militants, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and light machine guns, stormed a barge operated by the United States firm, Willbros, on behalf of energy giant Shell and seized nine foreign workers.

Six of the men were later released. But three - US oil workers Cody Oswald and Russel Spell and British security expert John Hudspith - are still being held hostage at a rebel base near the village of Okerenkoko.

A reporter who visited the area met scores of heavily-armed guerrillas equipped with radios, body armour, speed boats and infantry weapons.

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