Tuesday, April 16, 2013

MEND Is Faceless – Asari Dokubo

FORMER Niger Delta activist, Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, has described the Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta as a “faceless” organisation.
photo FORMER Niger Delta activist, Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, has described the Movement for Emancipation of Niger Delta as a “faceless” organisation.
He also dismissed the group’s reported plan to commence fresh hostilities to save Christians from Boko Haram violence.

“There is nothing like MEND,” Dokubo-Asari said in an interview with correspondents during a visit to the Presidential Villa on Monday.

MEND, through its spokesman, Gbomo Jomo, on Sunday said it would from May 31, in an exercise codenamed Operation Barbarossa, attack mosques and Islamic clerics

It also claimed responsibility for the destruction of Oil Well 62 belonging to the Shell Petroleum Development Company in Ewellesuo, Nembe Local Government of Bayelsa State.

Dokubo-Asari, who said the current MEND was only a media creation, noted that the authentic one existed as a pressure group for releasing him and former Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha from detention.

Dokubo-Asari said, “I am a Muslim, I do not subscribe to attacking religious centres of worship. I do not believe that MEND exists; I have always said there is nothing like MEND.

“MEND is just the figment of the imagination of people, it’s on the Internet and newspapers, but who is MEND? Nobody can really tell you who MEND is.

“MEND was formed, only for the purpose of my release and that of Alamieyeseigha when we were in detention. MEND leaders are not known anywhere like other organisations like the Ijaw Youth Council, OPC and so on.

“MEND actually is faceless because Henry Okah himself has denied that he is not the leader of MEND in court under oath.”

Warning against actions religious crisis, he said it would be foolhardy for anybody or group to introduce religious war into the crisis currently facing the country.

According to him, almost all families in the country have a mixture of people of different faiths as members.

He added, “For instance in Yorubaland, how are you going to fight? In some families, you have their mother as a Christian, and their father a Muslim. Some of the children are pastors, and others are missioners of Islamic organisations.”

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