Buhari commended over military deployment in Niger Delta

A new group in the South-South, the New Niger Delta Emancipation Front has warned militants op­erating in the region to close shop and embrace peace even as it hailed the deployment of the military under ‘Opera­tion Crocodile Smile’ to restore sanity to the area.

The front noted in a statement issued in Abuja that the presence of the military in the Niger Delta is crucial to rescuing the region’s larger population who have become human pawns to a vocal minor­ity made of the militants and their sponsors.

The statement which was issued Wednesday by Lucky Humphrey, Director, Public En­lightenment and Aware­ness, urged Nigerians in the South-South region to speak out against the atrocities being com­mitted against them by militants who try to im­pose their decisions on the entire area without having held consulta­tions with anyone on what they want.

It said things could have gone worse had the Federal Govern­ment succumbed to the blackmail of those resisting military pres­ence in the Niger Delta under the pretext of calling for negotiation while what they were actually doing was “buying time for their boys (militants) to mo­bilise and gather more weapons.”