Media Coordinator at the former militants camp in Obubra, Mr. Eikpen Appah, has said that about 700 young men, who claimed they are former militants, were turned away after it was discovered that their names were not on the current  list.

Speaking to newsmen in Obubra, Cross River State, Mr. Appah said, “we have had this problem for some time. Some youths would come here claiming to be former militants and we would tell there is a due process on ground. Recently, about 700 youths were turned back from here.”

He explained that there was no doubt that some of them are former militants while some want to come to camp when it was not their turn yet.

“So we tell them to wait for their turn and they are really former militants, it will get to their turn. We have a process here. The former militant leaders send their boys’ names, first to Abuja. Abuja will find out if their names are on the former militants list and if their names are there, we then cleared them for camp,” he said.

He explained further that what some of these boys do was that they would just gather themselves and storm the camp without invitation and “we turn them back just as we did to the 700 young men.”

Also speaking, chairman of Foundation for Ethnic Harmony in Nigeria, FEHN, the body responsible for training the former militants in the camp, Mr Allen Oyema, said some politicians were trying to send some persons to the camp to  destabalise operations in the camp.

“I warned months ago that there were plans to derail this programme by certain people. Some people are out to orchestrate acts that would tarnish the success of the amnesty programme.

“This they started from the outset. It could be political or econonmical. I warned because these boys were opening up to us,” he said.

We are not surprised that we have spates of bombings here and there but that has nothing to do with the amnesty programme itself. The amnesty is a huge success. People are at work to ensure that they rubbish the amnesty. But thankfully, the international community has visited this camp and every body is attesting to the fact that the amnesty programme is on course and in fact succeeding and it is because of that success that you see a lot of Niger Deltans trying to key in,” he added.