Former President Goodluck Jonathan has denied allegations he is one of the sponsors of the Niger Delta Avengers.
The ex-president in distancing himself from the militant group which claimed responsibility for recent attacks in the oil-rich region, raised the alarm that his life was under threat.
Jonathan was reacting to a statement issued by the self-styled Reformed Niger Delta Avengers (RNDA), a splinter group of the Niger Delta Avengers.
The RNDA had, in the statement, accused the former president of acting in concert with a number of political figures from the South-South region who the group identified as Niger Delta Avengers sponsors.
Jonathan, in a statement on Sunday by his media aide, Ikechukwu Eze, described the list as a malicious fabrication and an attempt by another group, the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND), to eliminate him.
The statement read in part, “Since it is not in our place to speak for all those named in the obvious fabrication, we are only intervening to the extent that its hidden intent poses a violent threat to the life of former President Goodluck Jonathan, a committed patriot.
“We are seized by the feeling of déjà vu occasioned by the resurrection of one dim character masquerading as Cynthia Whyte, who had in the past served as the spokesperson for a notorious group that had all along shown its hand to be going after the life of former President Jonathan.”
The former President recalled that in 2007, after he emerged as the running mate of the late President Umar Yar’Adua, the group invaded Yenogoa in an effort to assassinate him.
He added that the members of the group later bombed his compound in Otuoke, Bayelsa State, on a night he was scheduled to attend to an important matter in his country home.
Other persons listed by the RNDA as Niger Delta Avengers sponsors include the Rivers state Governor, Nyesom Wike; the Bayelsa state governor, Seriake Dickson; Chief Edwin Clark, a former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Senator Godswill Akpabio; ex-militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo (alias Tompolo); the founder, African Independent Television, Raymond Dokpesi; Kingsley Kuku; Kimi Angozi, and Patrick Akpobolokemi.
According to the Punch, virtually everyone named by the RNDA as Niger Delta Avengers sponsors has denied any sort of involvement with the group.
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