Gas Pipeline bombing: We are closing in on perpetrators – JTF Commander

The military, yesterday, invaded some Ijaw communities in Gbaramatu kingdom, Warri South-West Local Government Area, Delta State, with gunboats in search of militants, who carried out a three-day bombing of crude oil and gas pipelines in the state, from last Thursday.

This came as ex-militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo, wrote President Muhammadu Buhari, alleging that top members of his party, All Progressives Congress, APC, in Bayelsa and Delta states were responsible for the ongoing vandalization of crude oil and gas pipelines in the creeks of Delta state.

Meanwhile, Joint Task Force Commander of Operation Pulo Shield in the Niger Delta, Major General Alani Okunola, said, yesterday, that the task force was closing in on those blowing up oil pipelines belonging the Nigeria Gas Company, Chevron Nigeria Limited and Nigeria National Petroleum Company, NNPC. He vowed that JTF would fish them out.

Confirming the invasion of the military, the chairman of Okpelama, an Ijaw town in Gbaramatu kingdom, Mr. Moses Yabrade, said that soldiers stormed his community in the midnight of Saturday, breaking houses but stressed that he did not know what they came for.

Following the blockade by soldiers, who reportedly warned leaders of some of the communities to produce the militants vandalizing pipelines in several parts of the state, more riverside dwellers are fleeing their communities because of an unsubstantiated report that the soldiers said they would return tomorrow.