Former Niger Delta militants make fresh demands from Buhari

Former Niger Delta militants under the Third Phase Group have called on the Federal Government to develop the region to avert another crisis.

The former militants said that the failure of former Presidential Adviser to the President on the Amnesty Programme, Kingsley Kuku, was attributed to the recent surge in militancy and unrest.

They released a joint statement on Friday, by National Chairman, Diepreye Ogbetebe; Vice Chairman, John Government; Secretary, Etarighobe Thompson and Delta State Chairman, Prince Ogor.

Speaking under the auspices of two groups- Niger Delta group and Egbema Voice- the former militants blamed Kuku’s mismanagement of Amnesty funds as a direct result of increased agitation.

“The Programme under Kuku specifically failed as a result of mismanagement of funds allocated for the programme by the Federal Government. Five groups under the third phase were marginalized and there were malicious diversion and deprivation of genuine and real persons that surrendered their arms and ammunition for which the slots were legitimately approved for.”

Furthermore, the militants said that the frequent vandalization of pipelines and crude oil facilities in the Niger Delta region was as a result of the non-documentation of some ex-militant leaders and their foot soldiers.

They lamented the “incompetent, corrupt and unfair representation of Phase III by the so called self-imposed national leaders, deprivation/non-documentation of some of the ex-militants during the documentation exercise handled by inter-agency task forces in the various JTF barracks.”

“Despite the infinitesimal amount of the 3642 slots approved for Phase III, most of the camps that surrendered less than 20 guns were given up to 50 slots while some of the camps that surrendered above 50 guns were given three slots due to malicious diversion of slots,” they added.

The militants also called for the immediate payment of all outstanding allowances to their leaders, while urging the government to train and engage them with gainful employments.

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