A new group of about 600 former rebels from Nigeria’s main oil producing region are to enter a government retraining camp from Sunday, a government statement said.
The 600 are from about 20 groups in the Niger Delta which had been fighting the government for a greater share of the country’s oil wealth, said the statement.
Participants who come from Ondo, Delta and Edo states will be screened “to ensure that no alcohol, weapons, arms or drugs are brought into the camp” at Obubra in Cross River State, said the presidential advisor on Niger Delta.
They will spend 10 days at the camp where retraining for militants from other states in the region will be held later.
Nearly 2,000 former militants underwent vocational and transformational retraining at the camp over the past month.
The numbers for the new session has been scaled down to match facilities at the camp, an official in the Niger Delta Delta ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
Late president Umaru Yar’Adua granted amnesty to Niger Delta militants who surrendered their arms between August and October last year. More than 20,000 fighters turned in their weapons and began retraining at the end of June at Obubra.
President Goodluck Jonathan, who took over in May after the death of Yar’Adua, is from the Delta, and his ability to deal with unrest there could be a major test ahead of elections in January.
Violence in the Niger Delta between 2006 to 2009 played havoc with oil output, which dropped from 2.6 million barrels a day to about one million.
Nigeria, one of the world’s largest oil exporters, derives more than 90 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from oil.