Former militant leaders in Nigeria's Niger Delta oil region have urged the government to pay out delayed stipends granted under a 2009 amnesty or face protests, a statement said on Thursday.
An uneasy peace is currently being kept in Nigeria's oil-producing heartland, which was rocked last year by militant attacks that cut crude production by as much as a third.
Failure to pay off former militants under the amnesty could jeopardize the relative stability in the region and even result in oil production again being choked off.
"We are calling for the immediate release of the balance sum of the 2016 supplementary budgetary allocation ... to avert any situation that will warrant beneficiaries of the program going to the streets to protest and barricade roads," the former militants said in a statement.
The government is now in talks with militants to end the attacks which cut Nigeria's output by 700,000 barrels a day (bpd) for several months last year, reducing total production at that time to about 1.2 million bpd. It has since rebounded.
Under the amnesty program, each former militant is entitled to 65,000 naira ($213.68) a month plus job training. But last week a special adviser to Nigeria's president said the program was facing a cash crunch."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-oil-idUSKBN16U1SX