Buhari To Visit Niger-Delta Later This Week, Aide Tells AFP

A presidential aide has confirmed to AFP that the president, Muhammadu Buhari will pay a visit to the Niger-Delta region later in the week.

A media aide to Buhari confirmed that the president would travel to Ogoniland in Rivers state to flag off a long-awaited clean-up of the area, which has been affected by oil spills.

“All things being equal, the president will be in Ogoniland on Thursday for the historic clean up of the area,” the aide told AFP.

The president’s visit is coming on the heels of the promise he made on Sunday that he would keep and “re-engineer” the amnesty, apparently reversing previous policy to wind-down the programme by 2018.

The visit will be Buhari’s first visit as president to Nigeria’s oil-producing south, which has been riven by an upsurge in violence from militants.

Attacks on pipelines and other infrastructure have cut Nigeria’s oil production to some 1.4 million barrels per day, exacerbating revenue shortfalls caused by the global slump in crude prices.