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The members of the Bayelsa State Security Council yesterday met for over eight hours over the rising dissent among hundreds of ex-militant youths. The concerned that they are threatening to launch a co-ordinated attack on oil installations along the creeks and waterways of the state over their non-inclusion in the Third Phase of the Amnesty programme.

Also of concern to the security personels. in the state is the re-surgence of attacks on boats along some of the creeks of the state known as the Snake Creek and the rising wave of piracy along the waterways.

Prior to the security meeting on Monday, the aggrieved militants had in a statement faulted the claim of the amnesty committee that the arms and ammunitions purportedly submitted to the Joint Military Task Force in Yenagoa were sub-standard, insisting that the President should investigate and ask military personnel on the level of arms they submitted in the state.

A government House source told LEADERSHIP in Yenagoa that the Security Council meeting also reviewed the various positions put forward by the aggrieved militant youths and ways of curtailing their excesses if the purported correspondence with amnesty committee failed.

The source said the Governor had directed the Military Task Force and other security agencies to invite the aggrieved militants and warn them against any planned action and its consequences.

However, in a statement signed by the Chairman of the Bayelsa Chapter of the third batch of the Amnesty Programme, Julius Joseph alias Don Julius, the group described the statement of the authorities of the Amnesty Committee on the arms submitted as “provocative” and “misplaced”
?They warned the committee not to take actions that would destroy the peace of the Niger Delta region and return it to a state of instability.

The statement noted that there were clear guidelines for the surrender of arms and ammunition by repentant militants to relevant security agencies which they followed with their surrendered arms being duly certified. ‘‘If our arms are not worth it, there would have been no need for the Joint Military Task Force (JTF) to attend to us or receive them.”

“It is sad, vexatious and provocative that the amnesty committee would describe the arms we surrendered as below standard. We want to know the standard of the arms they want to be surrendered. The JTF we surrendered the arms to are experts and they attended to us. If the amnesty committee is saying our arms are not up to standard then they are saying the JTF don’t know what they are doing. We would continue to plead with President Goodluck Jonathan to intervene in our case” he said.

The aggrieved ex-militants commended President Goodluck Jonathan for the initiative and urged him to caution the members of the Amnesty Committee against making inflammatory statements on the amnesty programme. ”We are convinced of the sincerity of President Goodluck Jonathan and we decided to renounce militancy and embrace peace with the hope that the Federal Government would redeem its promise to absorb all ex-militants into the amnesty programme’’, he concluded.
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