Nigeria has set early June for the start of vocational training for more than 20,000 ex-militants who laid down their arms, under a government amnesty, a presidential aide said Wednesday.
“The target is 20,192 ex-militants and the call to camp for the first batch is scheduled for the first week of June 2010,” the presidential adviser on the Niger Delta, Timi Alaibe, told reporters.
Under the “rehabilitation” programme, the ex-fighters will be given vocational training in various fields as well as seminars on various aspects of life with a view to changing their orientation and world view, to ease their eventual re-integration into society, officials said.
It is also expected that they will be handed cash support to assist them in setting up businesses.
Alaibe, a native of the oil-rich but volatile region, said the government is setting aside an initial budget of 30 million dollars for the programme, adding that each batch will comprise 2,000 ex-militants.
This is the first such date set by the administration of new President Goodluck Jonathan, also a native of the region.
In what was seen as his chief achievement, Jonathan’s late predecessor, president Umaru Yar’Adua last year granted amnesty to thousands of militants in the world’s eighth-largest oil producer in return for laying down their arms.
But the process has unravelled as promised jobs, education, cash and infrastructure development failed to materialise quickly.
The setting of the rehabilitation date followed on the heels of a weekend threat by some militants in the Niger Delta to launch a fresh wave of potentially crippling attacks on Nigeria’s oil industry, giving the country’s new leader weeks to address their demands.
The region’s largest and most prominent militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) pressed Jonathan to kick-start talks on their demands for local communities to benefit from a greater share of the oil wealth.
Militants’ action in the region between 2006 and last year played havoc on oil production in Nigeria which derives more than 90 percent of its foreign exchange earnings from crude oil sales