Ex-militants protest unpaid allowances

Some ex-militants on Monday barricade the East-West Road and shut down traffic for many hours.

The action was over unpaid allowances by the Presidential Amnesty Programme.

The ex-agitators, who blocked the Mbiama axis of the Road, a border town between Rivers and Bayelsa states, called on the Federal Government to intervene.

The ex-militants, who belonged to the amnesty’s third phase, said they would stage a massive protest in Abuja if after seven days the Federal Government failed to remove the PAP Coordinator, Charles Dokubo.

They displayed placards with inscriptions such as, ‘Pay us our money,’ ‘Amnesty office pay us,’ among others.

It was learnt that it took the intervention of soldiers and the Central Zone Chairman, Ijaw Youths Council, Tari Porri, to convince the ex-militants to remove the barricade after three hours.

The leader of the protesters, identified as ‘General Cairo’, lamented that they were excluded from the scheme despite submitting their arms in 2011.

Cairo said following his insistence on inclusion, he suffered incarceration for four years in many detention facilities.

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