The Niger Delta militant leader, Asari Dokubo formally Mr. Melford Dokubo Goodhead Jnr.), has publicly paraded his new gang of militants working for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), warning that anybody who misbehaves or seeks Tinubu’s downfall will be smashed.
The parade of up to 300 militants, which was captured on video, was reportedly held after Asari Dokubo returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Dokubo, whom the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) had accused of being responsible for killings and criminalities in Imo and Anambra States in Southeast Nigeria and Southern Kaduna in the North, said while addressing militants on parade: “Whatever the enemies are planning, they will fail. I am not a ghost. I just come Saudi Arabia (I just returned from Saudi Arabia). We are here. We work for President Ahmed Bola Tinubu and he will succeed. Anybody who is planning for him to fail, that person already failed.
“We are not competing with anybody. We have never competed with anybody. It is turn by turn. It is Jagaban turn, so, wait for your turn. If you do anyhow, you see anyhow.”
In June, about two weeks after Tinubu was sworn in as President, Dokubo visited him at the Presidential Villa, saying Tinubu had been a father figure for him for 30 years.
During the visit, he alleged that 99 per cent of oil theft in the Niger Delta was done by the Nigerian military, especially the Army and the Navy.
Briefing State House Correspondents after his meeting with Tinubu, Dokubo disclosed that he had volunteered to end the menace knowing that he would be fully protected by Tinubu’s administration.
Dokubo said, “The Army and the Navy intimidate the Civil Defense who are by status the people who are supposed to guard these pipelines.”
“So the main culprits are the Army and the Navy. And there are notorious naval commanders who are known to be kingpins of these bunkering activities. Even if they give 1 billion contracts to everybody in the Niger Delta, because these military men are armed from the Army and the Navy, nothing will happen,” he said.
In a viral video, Dokubo is seen brandishing guns suspected to be AK-47s and boasting about how his father sold Igbos (people of the Southeast region of Nigeria) into slavery and how he can kill all of them.
Dokubo said that if not for the intervention of the British government, he would have been selling Igbos into slavery.
In the video, Dokubo said, “You opened, you take your leprosy hand to write. You don’t have respect for the people who bought your father.
“Is it every Kalabari man that is a Kalabari man? Do you know your roots, that you talk to me? You don’t know that people own this Calabari.
“You are law-abiding. Igbos I don’t know them. I don’t know where they come from because I know that if not for Britain’s intervention, I will still be selling them the way my father sold them.
“Now look at you people in Igboland, look at how you are dying woto woto woto woto woto, you are talking. You will do video to sell that Alhaji has run away.”
Brandishing his guns, Dokubo who spoke in Pidgin English, said, “Do you see me, I don’t run. Your heads are not correct. It is like you people are looking for who will finish you all. Look for you people everywhere and finish you all. You can see me.”