Amnesty Package: Militants To Get N20,000 Each Monthly - N1,500 For Food daily - 10,000 To Be Affected

Donald Ojogo, South-South Bureau Chief with Agency Reports - 18.07.2009

Some 10,000 militants could benefit from an amnesty in Niger Delta region, a military official told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on Friday.

Air-Vice Marshal Lucky Ararile said militants, who disarmed, would be paid a monthly allowance of N20,000 and a daily food allowance of N1,500, while being reintegrated into civilian life.

The main militant group has called a 60-day halt to attacks in the Delta. This followed the release of militant leader, Henry Okah on Monday, as part of the amnesty.

AVM Ararile said the militants were based at about 60 camps around the Delta. He said the authorities were setting up 27 collection and reintegration centres for the disarming fighters, mostly in Rivers, Delta and Bayelsa states where the violence had been worst.

The disarming militants would be paid N20,000 ($135) per month while in the centres, along with N1,500 a day for food, he said.

After a major military offensive in May, President Umaru Yar’Adua proposed the amnesty, in an offer which lasts until October. Rebel leader, Henry Okah, was the first militant granted amnesty this month. But his organisation, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, dismissed the amnesty offer in general, saying it should be aimed at criminals, not “freedom fighters.”

The movement has been attacking oil installations, kidnapping petroleum company employees and fighting government troops since January 2006 in what it called a protest against the unrelenting poverty of people in the Niger Delta. It wants to force the government to devote more oil-industry funds to the region.

0At the same time, Nigeria’s military has been fighting a losing battle against its opponents, who use guerrilla tactics in an intricate network of lagoons, creeks, estuaries and mangrove swamps stretching across one million square miles (640 million acres). The area is home to several minority groups and some of Africa’s largest oil deposits.

Reacting to the speculation on Friday, a militant leader, who called himself one of the field commanders of MEND, but preffered to remain anonymous, threatened that the nation would witness deadlier attacks on unexpected economic interests.

The militant leader’s reaction came as the coordinator of Ijaw Monitoring Group, Joseph Evah, warned that the amnesty package of the Federal Government was heading for the rocks in the face of the speculation.

The militia warlord who spoke on telephone however, asserted that all freedom fighters will observe the 60- day ceasefire after which the next line of action will be determined.

“We have been hearing of things like that but we shall not react until the end of the ceasefire declared by the leadership of MEND; but I can assure you that government should not contemplate such a rubbish; who told them we are hungry?

“They should keep their N20,000 for their families, we don’t need it to survive because even some of us have been doing more than that for our fighters in the creeks. But let me assure you, once that is confirmed to be true, then the nation should be prepared for deadlier attacks on what the deceitful political leadership relies on to give to us.”