President Muhammadu Buhari’s position on
unleashing military forces on Niger Delta militants
may not have changed 4 months after he stated
the position.
Recall that in April this during his visit to China,
the president while meeting with the Nigerian
community there said that saboteurs and vandals
of the oil and gas installations in the Niger Delta
region would be given the Boko Haram treatment
should they continue with their nefarious acts.
He had said: “I ask for your support to make our
vision of stamping out corruption a reality in the
shortest possible time. Whoever is caught will not
be spared. The government is still being dared,
but those who are sensible should have learned a
lesson. Those who are mad, let them continue in
their madness.

“I am aware that in the last two weeks, the national
grid collapsed a number of times. I hope this
message will reach the vandals and saboteurs who
are blowing up pipelines and installations. We will
deal with them the way we dealt with Boko
Haram.”
Yet on Saturday night 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, the president made a repeat of the
threat.
The development was a way of strongly assuring
the existing and prospective foreign investors in
Nigeria that their investments were fully secured
and protected.
He told the Japanese leader that with the defeat of
the Boko Haram terrorists by the military, the
attention of the administration was now focused
on stopping the destruction of the country’s
economic assets by militants in the Niger Delta
region.
He said the militants must dialogue with the
Federal government or be dealt with in the same
way like Boko Haram.
“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.
“As a government, we know our responsibility,
which is to secure the environment. It is clear to
us that lenders won’t fund projects in insecure
environments.
“We realize that we have to secure the country
before we can efficiently manage it,” the President
said.
President Buhari also told Abe that security in the
Gulf of Guinea, which he said was being greatly
affected by piracy and armed robbery at sea, was
a priority for the Nigerian government.
‘‘We have provided funds to our Navy to buy new
platforms, train and effectively organize the
personnel to protect the area. We are looking
forward to support from developed nations for
satellite surveillance covering the Gulf,’’ he said.