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Nigeria seeks to empower 11,768 former Niger Delta militants

Xinhua, July 24, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Nigerian government on Sunday said it was yet to empower 11,768 former Niger Delta militants out of the 30,000 that were granted amnesty in 2009.

Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Paul Boroh, who disclosed this to reporters in Abuja, the country's capital, said the Presidential Amnesty Office had facilitated the employment of more than 13,348 ex-agitators within and outside the country on vocation, while 924 of them were on education.

The presidential aide said 2,849 delegates are exited so far.

According to him, the office trained the ex-militants in various vocational skills centers and educational institutions in Nigeria and abroad.

Boroh, a retired military officer, said new persons cannot be accommodated into the program because the aim of the program was to train ex-agitators who submitted their arms within the window period set by the government.

In June 2009, the Nigerian government offered amnesty to gunmen in the oil rich Niger Delta region, urging them to lay down their weapons by Oct. 4 in a bid to end unrest, which has cost Africa's top oil exporter billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Scores of Nigerian armed youth gave up their weapons and embraced amnesty offered by the Nigerian government in the most concerted effort yet to end years of fighting in the oil producing region.

The Niger Delta is an unstable area where inter-ethnic clashes are commonplace. Access to oil revenue is the trigger for the violence. Endit