Avengers Declares Stop To Hostilities, Asks Buhari To Watch His Comments

This was contained in a letter by its spokesman, Mudoch Agbinibo and addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari.

The group, while calling on Buhari to be cautious when making statement about it within and outside the country, further called for regular dialogue between government and aggrieved groups for unity to prevail in the country.

Recall that Buhari, while holding bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on the sidelines of the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Nairobi, Kenya, threatened to deal with the militants the same way he treated Boko Haram terrorists if they failed to dialogue with the government.

“We are talking to some of their leaders. We will deal with them as we dealt with Boko Haram if they refuse to talk to us,” Buhari had said.

But the group, in a letter which was posted on its website said, “We call on President Muhammadu Buhari to put away the garb of a stooge to the imperialists, whenever he speaks outside Nigeria. We have listened carefully and halted hostilities in the Niger Delta. We expect a genuine and positive attitude to restructuring and self-determination for every component unit of Nigeria. Dear president, what makes those countries (Japan, Germany, France, USA, Britain etc.) great is the ability of their governments to accommodate internal protestations and conflicts for the greater good of their nations over the years.

“Nigeria is not a one-man personal property. We must have these talks every time if this union must continue to work as one. The people of the Niger Delta have been living here from time immemorial, so we have the secret of the terrain and survival of amphibious operations.

“No amount of troop surge and simulation exercises will make you win the oil war; you can only win battles. You cannot apply the might of the state to restore the people’s confidence in your leadership when you cannot differentiate between genuine demands and being mismanaged by disorganised characters and tribal lords around you in your government that are playing the court jesters’ role as well as counting the days that is left in your four years term.

“You can deceive the whole world but we cannot be deceived by the so glamorized ongoing military operations in the creeks of Ijaw communities in the Delta coded ‘Operation Crocodile Smiles’; the world should know that with your pronouncement in Kenya and your attitude to the military build-up in the Niger Delta, it is crystal clear that the military has nothing less than a pre-determined genocide in Niger Delta.

“Please, also tell those foreign nations that your troops are about carrying out extrajudicial killings in the Niger Delta in violation of Article Four of the Geneva Convention with “OPERATION CROCODILE SMILE”.
“All sane minds know the meaning of “ CROCRODILE TEARS” so by code-naming your military operation CROCODILE SMILES only betrays your motives and attitude to the whole world about the Niger Delta question,” the group added.