SA Media - Please Mend Your Ways

Henry Okah was arrested in Joburg last week, and it seems as if the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta is going to take the rap for the car bombs in Abujah which also happened this weekend.

I don't think that's right, moral or factual  - this painting of MEND as a major terrorist group who we should all be terribly afraid of. In fact, I back MEND. I cheer their every victory - and I don't believe the weekend car bombings in Nigeria is one of theirs.*

The president of one of the most corrupt countries in the world, Goodluck Jonathan, has called the attack in Abuja a "wicked act of desperation by criminals and murderers". Well, hello Mr.Pot - did you enjoy your repartee with Mr Kettle?
Peter Sharwood-Smith, country manager for security consultancy Drum-Cussac  has been quoted thus:  "Mend have always taken advantage of any kind of event that will have the world's attention to get their point across." Unlike, for example, the national executive for a company earning millions for making silly statements, perhaps?
Despite being constantly portrayed by the media as a bunch of murdering thugs simply out to gain a piece of the pie for themselves, MEND is , as I see it, a true example of the people of the land fighting back against the oil giants - with some success, I might add.
 


*=Update: I found this and this online, which shows Goodluck Jonathan apparently denying that MEND were in any way responsible, and MEND simultaneously claiming responsibility for the bombs, adding however that the loss of life would have been averted if the State agencies had moved when they were warned, five days before the incident, in a very clear and unambiguous email. The Nigerian forces apparently did nothing at all, while our South African mob arrested Henry Okah.

The plot looks fair to thickening - but one thing I'm sure of, and that's that the South African press either have an anti-Niger-Delta-Emancipation agenda going on, or they simply don't know how to assimilate information. Read the first link again - the one I opened this post with - does that not send a clear message that MEND are running around like skellums blowing people up without apology? I think it does - and it makes me deeply ashamed of my country's media people.