The ex-militants stood in line like school children waiting to enter a camp and learn to abandon violence, but the question of who killed one of their leaders threatened the uneasy arrangement.
“If at the end of the investigation the culprits are not brought to justice, we may move to avenge his murder,” said Godswill Ikiroma, a 26-year-old who arrived here with hundreds of others to take part in an amnesty programme.
The mystery surrounding the killing of a notorious ex-militant has stirred trouble in Nigeria’s oil-producing region, raising concerns over a government amnesty credited with bringing relative peace ahead of upcoming elections.
It has also placed further doubt on President Goodluck Jonathan’s pledge to hold a free and fair ballot, with the murder sparking fears that a new round of violence and voter intimidation will result.
The man who was killed, Soboma George, was a notorious ex-gangster accused of helping rig 2007 elections.
He had also been a commander with the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s most prominent militant group known as MEND, and had himself signed up to the government amnesty deal.
Police say George was killed in an ambush last week as he left a football field in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil industry hub, and they suspect rival gang members were behind the murder.
But one of the country’s most well-known ex-militants, Ateke Tom, said questions were being asked about how those who sign up to the amnesty programme will be protected after they turn in their weapons.
“What happened to George can happen to any one of us because we no longer carry guns,” he told AFP.
“The boys are not happy that George was murdered just like that. Even some of them believe the government had a hand in his death because where he was killed was around a police station, navy barracks and government establishment.”
It is a sentiment that has been repeated by others despite being strongly refuted by authorities.
The city where George was killed hosts multi-national petroleum companies and is located in the Niger Delta, the country’s main-oil producing region, vast parts of which are swampland.
The region had been hit by years of unrest, including kidnappings and attacks on oil installations, before last year’s amnesty deal.
Some militant groups, particularly MEND, claimed to be fighting for a fairer distribution of oil revenue, while others were simply criminal gangs.
At the peak of the violence, Nigeria’s oil output declined sharply from 2.6 million barrels a day to about one million.
Thousands of militants are believed to have signed up for the amnesty programme offered by the government of president Umaru Yar’Adua, who died in May.
The current president, Goodluck Jonathan, is from the Niger Delta and faces pressure to resolve the situation in the region. He has not yet declared his candidacy for elections expected in January, but it is widely believed he will run.
The amnesty programme is designed to work in three phases: disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration, which is essentially job training.
A two-week demobilisation course is what brought Ikiroma and hundreds of others to the remote town of Obubra this week.
A spokesman for the programme, Ekpein Appah, said “these are boys who are used to fighting … and are now being transformed and reformed to be useful members of the society.”
The non-violence training and career counseling was to be handled by 25 experts from the United States and South Africa, along with 145 Nigerian instructors.
There have already been signs that George’s murder has affected the amnesty programme. A previous session at the camp around the time of the killing had to be cut short a day early.
The camp became tense when some of the ex-militants questioned how George could be allowed to be targeted, according to Larry Parkins, the head of the camp and an ex-military lieutenant colonel.
“We had to ask the last batch of ex-militants who had finished their training to go home one day before departure to avoid any unpleasant situation,” he said.
In the Port Harcourt neighbourhood where George was killed, some residents said they had left their homes immediately after the killing out of fear of reprisals. They have since returned and the area has been calm for now.
“No arrest has been made but we have known the killers by our investigation,” said police spokeswoman Rita Abbey. “The commissioner of police has warned them to show up or be declared wanted.”