Ejiofor Alike With Agency Report
18 November 2009
Lagos — The Joint Task Force (JTF) and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) yesterday traded blame over alleged raid of the home of a repentant militant leader, with the militants accusing the security outfit of threatening the ceasefire in the region by carrying out the raid.
MEND told Reuters yesterday that the JTF had raided the Kula community in Rivers state in search of weapons and destroyed the home of one of its former commanders, Christian don Pedro.
Pedro was among the leading militant commanders and thousands of their followers, who had earlier handed over their weapons under the Federal Government's amnesty programme for repentant militants.
But a JTF spokesman, Lt. Colonel Timothy Antigha denied that the taskforce carried out a raid, saying the security outfit had merely responded to reports of shooting in the area.
Antigha, who denied the militants' claims that don Pedro's home had been destroyed, said that JTF was alerted to several hours of shooting overnight and had merely gone to the area to investigate.
"It was dark and the people shooting escaped under the cover of darkness through the creeks. Later our men went to search the area where the shooting was coming from but we did not recover anything," Lt. Col. Antigha told Reuters.
"No-one was arrested, no building was destroyed. We are a bit concerned that after people said they had surrendered their weapons we are still hearing of shooting in and around communities in the creeks," he added.
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