UK Warns Buhari:Using Military Confrontation In Niger Delta Crises Will Only End In Disaster.

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari needs to address grievances in the Delta region where militants have been blowing up oil pipelines in a conflict that has become a “major concern”, a senior British official said yesterday.
The swamps of the southern Delta have been hit by a series of attacks on pipelines and other oil and gas facilities that have reduced Nigeria’s output by 300,000 barrels a day, closed a major
export port and two refineries.
Nigeria has moved in army
reinforcements to hunt the militants but
British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond
said Buhari needed to the deal with the root causes because a military
confrontation could end in “disaster”.
Crude sales from the Delta account for 70 percent of national income in Africa’s biggest economy but residents,
some of whom sympathise with the
militants, have long complained of
poverty.
“It’s obviously a major concern,”
Hammond told reporters on the sidelines
of a regional security conference in
Abuja when asked about the Delta
situation.
“The idea that your answer is by moving
big chunks of the Nigerian army to the
Delta simply doesn’t work,” he said,
adding that the army did not have the
capacity while fighting Boko Haram
jihadists in the north. “It won’t deal
with the underlying issues.”
“Buhari has got to show as a president
from the north that he is not ignoring
the Delta, that he is engaging with the
challenges in the Delta,” Hammond said.
Buhari is a Muslim from the north who
has not visited the Christian Delta since
taking office a year ago, something
highlighted by a militant group, the
Niger Delta Avengers, which has claimed
a string of attacks on pipelines.
The group has warned oil firms to leave
the region within two weeks and says it is
fighting for independence for the Delta.
It has said it wanted a greater share of
oil revenues and an end to oil
pollution.
The attacks have driven Nigerian oil
output to near a 22-year low and, if
the violence escalates into another
insurgency, it could cripple output in a
country facing a growing economic
crisis.
Buhari, who has not commented about
not visiting the Delta, has extended a multi-million dollar amnesty signed with
militants in 2009 but upset them by
ending generous pipeline protection
contracts.
He also cut the amnesty budget by
around 70 percent, which partly funds training for unemployed.