Port Harcourt:  The killing of a powerful former Nigerian gang leader in the restive Niger Delta has laid bare the fragility of an amnesty programme for ex-militant fighters in Africa's biggest oil and gas industry.  Soboma George, a one-time militant leader who accepted a government amnesty last year, was gunned down in the oil hub of Port Harcourt last Tuesday in what police said appeared to have been a clash between rival gangs.  But the circumstances of his death are only slowly emerging, and as yet are still not fully clear.

Some witness accounts say he was walking to his car with his girlfriend after playing football and that his death was a cold-blooded act of murder, leading to speculation it was his connection to the amnesty programme that cost him his life.

"I urge the government to speedily address this problem so that other boys should not start attacking their leaders and killing other innocent people," Ateke Tom, a fellow ex-militant leader who accepted amnesty last year, told Reuters.

The amnesty established by late President Umaru Yar'Adua was the most comprehensive effort yet to end years of unrest in the Niger Delta, violence which has prevented the OPEC member from pumping much above two-thirds of its oil production capacity.

At the height of the unrest, pipeline bombings, attacks on oil flow stations and the kidnap of oil workers forced foreign firms to evacuate staff and hampered their operations, costing Nigeria an estimated $1 billion a month in lost revenues.

Thousands of former gunmen handed over weapons last year in return for clemency and the promise of stipends and retraining. The process has brought more than a year without any significant attack against the oil industry.

But there have been frequent protests by junior militant gang members -- often referred to as "boys" -- over delays to the payment of stipends and a lack of jobs. Some have started turning hostile against the leaders who convinced them to lay down their weapons, security sources say.

"Since the government purportedly granted them amnesty, it is the responsibility of government to protect them and I don't think that was done in this case," said Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, a top former rebel leader who agreed to an earlier 2004 amnesty.

"INSECURE AND ANGRY"

"Soboma's killing is a setback for the amnesty programme because he was a major stakeholder. He always encouraged his boys to participate in the post-amnesty programme," said Akinaka Richard, head of a local civil society group and member of the government's amnesty implementation committee. "Now the boys are feeling very insecure and angry. They are grumbling that, if not for the amnesty, would our boss have been killed just like that," he said.

Hours before his death, George had signed a list approving another batch of 50 of his boys to go to a re-training camp set up for former militants, Richard said.

Last year's amnesty programme met with a great deal of optimism but security experts warned that it could only be sustained if junior fighters -- many of them hardened by a life of guns and locally-brewed gin in camps deep in the mangrove creeks -- could be found jobs.

President Goodluck Jonathan, the first Nigerian leader from the Niger Delta, who took over after Yar'Adua's death this year, has said he is determined to secure peace in the region.

Several militant factions in the Niger Delta -- including George's -- were originally set up with the support of local politicians to help rig elections. With federal, state and local polls due next January, some fear history will repeat itself.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the main militant group responsible for years of attacks on oil infrastructure, blamed the government for George's death. "The amnesty as currently being practiced is a scam, and as more individuals begin to realise it and gradually back away, they become targets for assassination," a MEND spokesman said in an e-mail to Reuters.

"We have every reason to believe that the government of Nigeria is behind the hit."