The Federal Government yesterday justified its decision to opt for foreign training for former members of the Niger Delta militant groups who embraced its amnesty initiative.
The Special Adviser to the President on the Niger Delta, Kingsley Kuku, who was reviewing the achievements of the Amnesty Office under the first 100 days of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, said government wanted to take the former arms-bearers away from where they would easily embrace their old ways.
Besides, he said it was expedient and cost-effective for government to train the former agitators abroad, as there were hardly enough vocational or skills acquisition centres within the country to cater for the over 26,000 beneficiaries that enrolled in the programme at the expiration of the deadline to surrender their arms.
“The extant DDR (disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration) rules and codes as spelt out by the UN strongly recommends the demobilisation and reintegration of former arms-bearers should be at locations far and totally removed from their natural habitats and environment to minimise or eliminate the incentive for them to return to their old ways,” Mr. Kuku explained.
According to the presidential adviser, it would have been counter-productive to have kept demobilised former agitators for several months in their homes before placing them in either skill acquisition centres or formal education, arguing that the marginal difference in the costs between local and offshore training informed the decision to opt for the latter to expedite the reintegration process.
Benefits of initiative
He commended the government for the amnesty initiative, saying it had since been proclaimed as the best option to resolve the crisis in the Niger Delta region, as oil production has since witnessed significant improvement from less than 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) when the amnesty was proclaimed in 2009 to the present volume of about 2.5 million bpd.
On specific milestones of the programme, Mr. Kuku said about 19,000 of them, out of the total 20,192 that enrolled in the first phase of the Programme, had been fully demobilised, after participating in the non-violence transformational training at the Amnesty Demobilisation Camp, located in Obubra, Cross River State.
The final batch of 1,192, he said, was expected to go through a similar training before the end of the month to signal the end of the first phase of the Amnesty Programme.
“It is on record that the Amnesty programme is the only DDR programme in the world that did not rely on the expert advice from the United Nations. It has been acknowledged as a unique Nigerian-made peace model proclaimed, funded and managed by Nigerians to this level of success achieved so far without any tragic incidents. It is on record that other countries implementing DDR programmes are still battling to achieve a closure to either disarmament or demobilisation components,” he said.
The placement of the trainees in skills acquisition/vocational programmes was based on the interests expressed by beneficiaries in areas, including pipeline welding, underwater welding, ocean diving, crane operations, oil drilling, automobile technology, fish farming and entrepreneurship as well as formal education.
He said key operators in the country’s oil and gas industry (OGI) had already established a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to absolve about 3,000 products of the programme, while discussions are on with various government and private operators agencies, with the Century Group, an indigenous operator, offering employment to 40 of the recently graduated trainees as well as a pledge to train and absorb a total of 1,000.
He accused the Joint Task force (JTF) and other security officers in the region of complicity with some youths to frustrate the momentum of the programme, saying the Amnesty Office had no mandate to cater for more than 26,358 persons who dropped their guns and accepted the offer of amnesty on or before October 4,2009.
“The activities of youths who collude with very corrupt security agents working in the Niger Delta to claim that they have disarmed and are entitled to inclusion in the Amnesty Programme are currently exerting so much burden on the managers of the Programme, giving bad publicity and unwarranted attacks. We have challenged the nation’s security agencies to help stem this ugly tide,” he said.