By Emma Amaize & George Onah
PORT HARCOURT — TRAINING of the second batch of 2,000 former militants, which is supposed to resume on Monday, July 19, at the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC,  camp in Obubra, Obubra Local Government Area of Cross River State, has been moved forward to allow for update of facilities and address some logistic and organisational challenges at the campground.

Vanguard learnt the number of former militants invited for training may be reduced from 2,000 in the first batch due to lack of adequate facilities to accommodate them.

As at Wednesday, construction work was on-going on new structures to house the former militants.

Special Adviser to the President on Niger-Delta and Coordinator of the Presidential Committee on Post-Amnesty Programme, Chief Timi Alaibe, confirmed to Vanguard when contacted, yesterday.  “I told you we are carrying out a post-mortem on our first training, the training is not likely to resume next week. I think it will be in another 10 days or so for things to be sorted out.”

Chief Alaibe said the issue of classification of the former militants, who just concluded the first phase of non-violence training was being handled to determine their next training centres.

“We want to ensure that things are done effectively and efficiently. We have seen the challenges in the first training, which we have taken as our pilot phase and we are putting in place relevant structures to make the next phase is comfortable for the former militants,” he said.

“Work is going on day and night to complete the perimeter fencing of the training ground. So like I told you, a lot of things are going on, we are doing a post mortem on the first phase and also putting some facilities in place,” he added.

Vanguard learnt that the Alaibe committee has some serious funding challenges but the matter is being sorted out before the resumption of the second batch to avoid the kind of logistic problems that were faced with the first batch.