Henry Okah insists President Jonathan masterminded two bomb attacks

Henry Okah, the detained leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), blamed for the 2010 Independence Day bomb that killed at least 10 people with many more injured, is to tell a South African court the attacks were sponsored by President Goodluck Jonathan.

That, he said, came after the president and those working for him, had engineered similar attacks earlier in March 2010.

“It is my belief that President Goodluck Jonathan's government working with a faction of MEND planned and executed the bombings of 14 March 2010 and 1 October 2010,” Mr. Okah said in an affidavit deposed at a South African court.

The president's spokesperson, Reuben Abati, could not be reached to comment for this story. Calls to his mobile telephone was neither answered nor returned.

The sworn affidavit is expected to be filed at the court between Tuesday and Wednesday as Mr. Okah renews his bid to secure a bail after spending more than one year in a South African jail.

His trial is set to start October 1, 2012, exactly two years since a devastating blast that occurred less than a kilometer from the Eagles Square in Abuja where President Jonathan was attending Nigeria’s 50th anniversary.

The militant group, MEND, which authorities said Mr. Okah headed, claimed responsibility for the attack. Mr. Okah has denied membership of the group and plotting the attacks.

Instead, in a shocking deposition that further deepens the complexity of an already convoluted case, Mr. Okah, who lives in South Africa, said Mr. Jonathan and his aides organized the attacks in a desperate political strategy to demonize political opponents, and win popular sympathy ahead of the 2011 elections.

“The purpose of the 14 March 2010 bombing in my opinion was to create an atmosphere of insecurity in the Niger Delta where President Goodluck Jonathan at that time, was fighting to oust the governor Mr. Emmanuel Uduaghan whom President Goodluck Jonathan intended to replace with his Minister for Niger Delta, Mr Godsday Orubebe,” Mr. Okah said in a 194-page affivadavit obtained by P M.