MEND not keeping 24 Pinoy as hostages - Nigerian gov't

Nigeria’s federal government has described the group holding the 24 Filipino seamen in the Niger Delta as “hired miscreants, vandals, criminals, drug peddlers, and kidnappers" posing as members of the militant Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. Frank Nweke, Nigeria’s minister of information and communications, was quoted in a report Sunday in the Nigerian Tribune (www.tribune.com.ng) as saying that the abduction of the Filipino seafarers was meant to embarrass the federal government. Nweke said the comprehensive report on the Filipino hostages aired by the Cable News Network (CNN) on Thursday was “a hoax, stage-managed" by the network’s correspondent in Nigeria and made to appear MEND was involved in it. It was the same line taken by the MEND through an e-mail from Jomo Gbomo, the group’s spokesman, to Nigerian newspapers on Friday. Gbomo said on Friday that the group keeping the 24 Filipino seafarers was “a collection of thugs, pirates and bunkerers" who “had nothing to do with MEND." He said the group was hired by local politicians and some “misguided" Ijaw leaders to prevent an Itsekiri man emerging as governor in Delta State. The group’s leader, a certain Major General Tamuno," he said, “is unknown to us and is a fraud." A few days after the January 20 abduction of the 24 Filipinos, Gbomo already issued a statement through an e-mail to the media in Nigeria categorically saying that MEND had nothing to do with it. Nweke said the CNN report that featured the Filipino captives purportedly held by the MEND militants was intended to “wrongfully denigrate Nigeria and her peoples, send the wrong signals to the international community about the state of affairs in the country, create unnecessary panic, foster the feeling of insecurity, advance an outdated thesis of neglect of the Niger Delta, and portray Nigeria as a country in perpetual crises." The Nigerian Tribune quoted Nweke as saying that the CNN report was the result of collaboration with “some politicians with inordinate ambition to bring the country down since they could not have their ways." “Recent events indicate that these forces have now chosen the Niger Delta as the anchor point of their machinations and have been sponsoring the likes of (CNN correspondent Jeff) Koinange to discredit the Federal Government’s laudable policies, aimed at reconstructing the region and improving the social conditions of the people," Nweke said. Meantime, the Vanguard Nigeria reported that President Olusegun Obasanjo will not use the military option in the volatile Niger Delta. Obasanjo, who is out campaigning for his candidates in the April elections, said his refusal to use force against the hostage takers was “not borne out of cowardice but because of his regard for the sanctity of human lives." Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had asked the Nigerian government, which is in charge of negotiating with the hostage takers, against using the military option for the release of the Filipino seamen Philippine Foreign Undersecretary for Migrant Worker Esteban Conejos left over the weekend for Nigeria to personally take a look at the conditions of the estimated 3,900 Filipinos in that African state. President Arroyo said Conejos would also attend to the efforts taken by diplomatic officials in Nigeria for the release of the 24 Filipino seamen held in Delta State capital of Warri, instrumentation engineer Winston Helera in Owarri and Josiebeth Gregorio Foroozan in Port Harcourt in the Rivers State. - GMANews.TV