Ex-militant leaders support amnesty

On Monday, the former militants protested on the streets of Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, over allegations of having been short-changed in the payment of their allowances by their commanders. They alleged that the federal government last week paid their allowances to their group commanders through the Amnesty Committee, but the commanders had refused to pay them their entitlements.

However, some of the militant leaders said the mode of payment was a result of the agreement they had with the Amnesty Implementation Committee. One of the ex-militants, Fred Ogbular, said the problem is traceable to “politicization” of the process.

“In Edo State, seriously, we have no much problem,” he said. “But the problem is that of those that went to Abuja for rally. We in Edo State, we have like seven camps, and in my camp, my general is Tere Nwa. As for his own, he has done well. It was those of them that went with them for the rally that were not satisfied. I don’t know for them. They were not there to share the pain, but now here to take money.”

Deduction is mutual

A leader of one group, General Pere Ejune, owned up to deducting the allowances of his boys. He said this was the agreement they reached before their names were collated along with that of others.

“You see, they said they were short paid. There is no short payment. The Nigerian man, the Niger Delta man and the rest, they are greedy and selfish,” he said. “You see, because there are some particular people that stayed with us in the creeks, right from the days we stormed that area, and we called it our survival camps.

“After our Mr. President grant us amnesty and we embraced amnesty, you see some of all these our boys we call them ‘run away soldiers’. In the Nigeria Army itself, we have run away soldiers. So, on the day of the amnesty programme, these people came out to the amnesty college to join us late hour, but we gave them condition, because they ran away when soldiers were killing some of our boys and all of us became wanted people.

“So, we gave them condition for payment aspect because this money they are paying us, the General is collecting N65, 000, while the boys are also collecting the N65, 000 too. So, we agreed on the basis that we have a lot of expenses to run because we want this amnesty. So we agreed to deduct this money to run these expenses, because all these our guns and ammunitions that we submitted to the federal government, you yourself know that the federal government did not pay anybody. Say, you brought 200 guns or 300 guns or this is the money to go and pay for the guns. There is nothing like that and we have owed a lot of money. So, we have to deduct some amount of money to pay for these debts we incurred before this time. So that is what happened.”

Other questions:

Who are those that you bought the guns from?

A: You want to know? You see, we owe so many debts, but let me just say many people. You see, the money we deduct, like the money that they pay on Monday, was N65, 000 per each person. So we only deduct N20, 000 to pay all these debts. Even the payment before, the last upper month and the upper month were deducted. I mean, all the things we have been taking care of and even those that did not come out from the creeks for amnesty, we have to convince them so that they will not go back to the creeks to carry anything again. So, we give them from the little we collect here and the little we send to our communities to make things easier for everybody to live.

What are you now doing to bring sanity to the boys that are threatening to cause trouble?

A: Listen, ehn! As long as the General is concerned, nobody is going to cause any trouble. Except the General gives order, they can only make propaganda, they can always go to the air of newspaper people, they always go to do interviews, they can go to anywhere. But as far as the General is concerned.