The rebel commander High Chief Government Ekpemupolo alias Tompolo is on the run from government forces and the war in the Niger Delta is intensifying (AC Vol 50 No 11)...
Some of Tompolo’s supporters say he is lying low in Warri the capital of Delta State or in a well-fortified camp in the creeks...
Government forces claim Tompolo in his flight left behind in his guesthouse a package of documents giving details about the identity of his fighters arms procurement and relations with senior Delta politicians...
Yet Tompolo’s Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) rejects the documents as fake and is stepping up hit-and-run operations against government forces and oil companies...
The JTF commander in the field Major General Sarkin Yarkin-Bello says that the documents in Tompolo’s guesthouse included a Jane’s Defence manual on armoured cars and fighter jets...
Tompolo has acted as an arms broker so he is not just a customer...
Potentially the most damning documents are said to link Camp 5 and Tompolo’s MEND bases to politicians in the ruling People’s Democratic Party and oil company officials...
Governor Uduaghan has angrily denied allegations that he paid Tompolo 100 million naira (US$680 000) a month until recently...
Other documents from Tompolo’s house suggest that ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo regularly used anti-corruption measures to enforce his writ over Delta politicians...
MEND’s Jomo Gbomo has dismissed the Tompolo list as a fake...
Yarkin-Bello Tompolo attacks his former political allies and friends in the Delta along with other state governments for benefitting from his operations and then betraying him...
The ultra-radical Joint Revolutionary Force and its idiosyncratic Spokeswoman Cynthia Whyte said the fighting in Gbaramatu was ‘the culmination of an attempt by these ungrateful and uncircumcised elements to cage the rising stature of Government Ekpemupolo a true Ijaw freedom fighter and emancipator’...