“Henry Okah and MEND, are after my life,” GEJ cries out

Following the inclusion of his named as one of the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) sponsors, GEJ has raised an alarm that his life is under threat. He said listing him as a sponsor of the NDA, was another attempt by a group, Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, MEND, to eliminate him.

Cynthia Whyte, the spokesperson of Reformed Niger Delta Avengers (RNDA), a group which split from the NDA, had named GEJ as the grand patron of the NDA. But GEJ, in a statement, said the list by RNDA was political, adding that it was part of an attempt to assassinate him.

The statement read in part, “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 MEND, a violent and murderous underground group led by one Henry Okah, that had all along shown its hand to be going after the life of GEJ.”

GEJ 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 there.

According to him, the bombing that took place on October 1, 2010 at the Eagle Square, Abuja, also showed that MEND was violent. He stated, “We have no doubt in our mind that MEND, as a group contracted to go after GEJ with the mind of assassinating him, has yet to abandon this criminal and ignominious craving.

It is in this light that we view the purported statement issued by Whyte as not only a sadistic continuation of this sick desire, but also a futile attempt to instigate the FG to needlessly go after GEJ.

Those who have been following the unsavoury developments since the last general election would have noticed that MEND, its paymasters and other unscrupulous elements in the South-South region have been striving fruitlessly to exploit the ensuing confusion by surreptitiously working for the fulfilment of its yet-to-be declared political agenda.”