afrol News, 8 July - Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua has called for international support to curb oil smuggling - an international trade in exchange for ammunition - which he said is fuelling unrest in the country's southern Niger Delta.

Mr Yar'Adua, leader of Africa's second-biggest crude oil producer told Group Eight Summit in Hokkaido, Japan, that stolen crude should be treated like stolen diamonds, saying stolen crude aids corruption and violence.

Nigerian which has been battling with insurgency of armed groups, saying they are fighting for a greater share of oil wealth for the region, blames trade in stolen crude as a cause for persistent violence in the oil-producing Niger Delta that has cut more than 25 percent of the country's oil exports since 2006 allowing Angola to overtake Nigeria.

“Trying to stop the trade must be an international effort,” Mr Yar'Adua said, emphasising that people driving the market are companies looking for cheap crude to feed international markets.

Nigeria which is the exporter of crude oil loses at least 100,000 barrels of oil per day to thieves who either drill into pipelines or hijack barges loaded with oil, an act known locally as bunkering, which is shipped out and sold to international markets.

“While taking steps to address the grievances that have caused unrest in the Niger Delta, the government is also working to dismantle the criminal dimension of the crisis,” Mr Yar'Adua said.

Unrest in the Niger Delta, the heartland of the oil industry in Africa's top producer, had largely been driven by militant groups alleging neglect by successive governments, but has become increasingly intertwined with bunkering and rank criminality.

Militant groups have blown up oil pipelines and kidnapped foreign oil workers to press for more development, but criminal gangs have armed and sustained themselves through the lucrative trade in stolen oil and kidnappings for ransom.

Mr Yar'Adua has promised that a long-awaited peace summit will address the root causes of the frustrations among local communities on oil exportation but has also warned he will not tolerate the presence of armed groups in the delta's labyrinthine creeks.

Many doubt the summit will achieve much given a lack of cohesive strategy among federal, state and local governments and with the region's main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, saying it will not attend.

A week ago process leading to the peace talks hit rocks when newly appointed mediator Professor Ibrahim Gambari was rejected by local leaders as a key mediator to the country’s crisis.

Mr Gambari is also said to have drawn condemnation for allegedly describing the summit as a national event, rather than something more directly related to people of Niger Delta.

Conflict in the region surged in the early 1990s due to tensions between foreign oil corporations and different ethnic groups in the region, who felt they were being exploited and saw their natural environment destroyed, particularly the Ogoni as well as the Ijaw in the late 1990s.

Unrests have continued throughout the 1990s, persisting until 2007, despite Nigeria's conversion to democratic rule and election of the Obasanjo government in 1999.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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