*As Itsekiri youths allege exclusion

By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

Calabar – No fewer than 1,075 ex-militants from Rivers State, who reported for training at the Obubra Rehabilitation Camp in Cross River State, have been rejected for lack of space.

The Camp Commandant, Mr. Fred Aneseh, who disclosed this at the welcome ceremony of batch 16 made up of 1,500 ex-militants, weekend, said the people turned back were not invited for the training programme.

He said: “The new batch came in on the 14 and they are doing very well. There were a lot of uninvited people.
“We have 1,500 right now in camp but the people that were turned back were more than 1,075. They were from Rivers State.”

Meanwhile, Itsekiri youths under the aegis of the Itsekiri National Youths Council, INYC, has cried out against what they described as “deliberate exclusion of Itsekiri former agitators from the amnesty programme, particularly the different training schemes which former agitators in the region are undergoing both locally and internationally.”

National President of INYC, Mr. David Tonwe, stated this while briefing newsmen at the end of the group’s meeting at Ifie near Warri, Delta State.

Tonwe said Itsekri youths were still stunned over “unimaginable ethnocentric bias in the current execution of the programme such that not a single youth within the different Itsekiri groups of the former agitators, that officially submitted thousands of arms and ammunition through INYC to the then Amnesty Committee, have so far been considered for any of the training programmes.

He said: “This is most unfortunate and it portends circumstance of considerable danger that is capable of further accentua-ting the emerging belief that the amnesty programme is directed to serve the interest of a particular group.”

He called on those at the helm of affairs to be broad-minded and fair.