No one could confirm who carried out the attack. The men targeted were loyal to one of several Niger Delta militant leaders who accepted a government amnesty in 2009 in exchange for money, ending attacks that at one time shut down nearly half of production the nation’s oil and gas production.
Those killed included the younger brother of General Reuben Wilson, the leader of one former militant group.
Wilson confirmed the killing to a news agency at his house where weeping mourners were gathered. He denied that his group had returned fire.
Tensions are growing between militant leaders enjoying the lucrative state handouts or government contracts and their foot soldiers who have been paid much less or received nothing, tensions that now threaten the Delta’s fragile peace.
The shootout in the town of Lobia, which sits on the creeks and swamps of the Delta’s Bayelsa state, was close to where an attack on a boat by disgruntled ex-militants killed 12 policemen in April.
“There was an armed collision between two groups at Lobia, which led to the death of an unspecified number of persons. The bodies are still in the river,” said a spokesman for security forces in the Niger Delta, Lieutenant Colonel Onyeama Nwachukwu.
A senior security source, who also said the attack had led to a shootout, put the death toll at eight.
But Wilson denied that the group targeted by the unidentified assailants was armed.
“Unknown gunmen shot at them and killed them all and they were not armed, as claimed in some quarters,” he said.
The motive was unclear. The previous attack in April was carried out by followers of Kile Selky Torughedie, who claimed Torughedie had embezzled amnesty money they were owed.
Militants claiming to be from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) claimed April’s attack on a boat carrying police. Analysts doubted the claim as the group’s commanders are mostly under amnesty and its leader, Henry Okah, is in jail.
Culled from CHANNELS
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