Leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo, has sent a message Boko Haram, saying: “We are going to meet at the battlefield.”

The man who once took up arms against the Nigerian State (before Boko Haram did) was replying Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, who threatened both the Niger Delta and its most famous son, President Goodluck Jonathan, in a recent video.

Speaking yesterday in Port Harcourt during the First Phase of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) strategic partnership for Niger Delta ex-militants under the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Dokubo said:

“They have started oo! The leader of Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau said in a video that we should not play with them. He said, Goodluck, I am coming for you. Niger Delta, we are coming for you. Are we going to allow them to shoot the guns and throw the bombs? That is when we will dance?”

“2015 is more than do-or-die. It is our very survival that is being challenged, and we must tell them. You are a man and I am a man, we are going to meet at the battlefield. Be prepared, be watchful. The enemies should not be allowed.”

Dokubo upbraided northern leaders who, at the on-going national Conference in Abuja, have spoken in a manner to suggest that they are against the interests of the oil-bearing Niger Delta.

“In this region, there will be only one vote,” he said with regard to northern moves to oust Jonathan from the 2015 presidential race, vowing that nobody can stop Jonathan’s second term ambition.

“The people from the North have said that they should scrap the NDDC, that they should reduce the 13 per cent derivation to five per cent, and that nobody owns oil,” Dokubo added, declaring unequivocally that NDDC has come to stay and no president can either scrap it or reduce the 13 per cent derivation currently given to oil producing states in the country.

•Photo shows Dokubo Asari.