Checking Excesses Of Ex-Militants

When the Federal government of Nigeria granted Niger Delta militants amnesty on August 6, 2009, the reasons were obvious: to stem the rising youths’ violent protest against long term exploitation and underdevelopment of the region and save the oil based economy.

At first some people saw this approach as defeatist when, with its might, government could easily quell such insurrection from any section of the country. To such Nigerians, granting pardon to militants variously alleged to have killed and maimed their fellow citizens only to sabotage the nation’s oil and gas industry, was an anomaly.

However, a few saw the wisdom in government’s option for dialogue and pardon rather than the continuous war and senseless decimation of the nation’s growing generation and accordingly embraced the amnesty package, thus bringing to an end the unrest that tested the will of the Nigerian State.

It was in religious implementation of the amnesty project that the Rivers State government declared an interventionist strategy establishing the Social Development Institute at Okehi under the leadership of veteran security expert, Chief Albert Horsfall.

A former Director-General of State Security Services, Horsfall’s expectations are that progressively the group followership would be detached from the leadership to create a vacuum in their association and give them the opportunity to change, with great optimism in the success of the rehabilitation programme and conviction that since some of them unwillingly took up arms out of hunger, joblessness, poverty, misdirection, bad guidance and poor patronage, a positive change was possible.

To achieve that, Rivers State government through the SDI engaged experts in sociology and psychology, introduced 14 vocational skills acquisition programmes and paid each trainee the sum of N20,000 monthly.  So far, the Institute graduated its first batch of 300 repentant militants out of which 20 were promised employment, while others were organised into cooperatives and funded by the state government.

Regrettably, efforts by the state government to redirect the youths and offer them fresh hope in life came under threat recently when some disgruntled graduands at Okehi staged a violent protest and opted out of the programme over unreasonable cash requests.

The Tide condemns such unruly protest, and the attempt to intimidate and abduct members of the Social Rehabilitation Committee by some of the supposedly repentant militants. Those identified for this action must be punished.

We share the opinion that ex-militants who choose the path of criminality should answer for their actions as amnesty does not cover post amnesty crimes.

But as we heard, if they prefer their masters bidding to ask for cash, divide the camp and ready to be used as thugs in the 2011 general elections, they have the law enforcement agencies to contend with. The truly repentant militants should be protected by separating them from the bad eggs in their midst.

The state government should not hesitate to deal decisively with anyone whose ulterior motive is to frustrate the rehabilitation programme.

Even so, we are still convinced that the federal and state governments were right in granting amnesty and the choice of retraining the former militants as majority of them have truly shown considerable remorse and toed the path of honour with an even greater promise to begin  new lease of life.

The misconduct of a few therefore should not discourage the state government from its well intended rehabilitation programme.