**The authorities in Nigeria say more than 8,000 oil militants active in the Niger Delta surrendered under the two-month amnesty which expired on Sunday.**The official in charge of the scheme said 5,000 weapons and 18 gunboats had also been handed in by the militants.
President Umaru Yar’Adua is to meet some of the militant commanders who have disarmed on Friday.
However, one militant faction has said it will resume fighting and said those who had disarmed had been “rented”.
Attacks on oil installations and their employees have sharply cut Nigeria’s output in recent years.
President Yar’Adua has made bringing peace to the region one of his priorities.
‘Rented’ militants
Air Vice Marshal Lucky Ararile said the government considered the amnesty a success and that the figures released on Thursday were provisional because there had been a last-minute rush before it ended.
Earlier, one faction of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta led by Henry Okah said its commanders had been replaced and that it would resume attacks on oil pipelines and installations from next Thursday.
Nigeria’s peace hopes rest on Okah
It said most of those who had surrendered “were rented by the government in the hope that real militants would be persuaded to emerge”.
“We will fight for our land with the last drop of our blood regardless of how many people the government of Nigeria and the oil companies are successful in bribing,” said an e-mail sent by Mend spokesman Jomo Gbomo.
Correspondents say it is not clear how many fighters belong to Mr Okah’s faction.
The amnesty was announced by the government shortly after Mr Okah was freed from prison.
However, the BBC’s Abdullahi Kaura Abubakar in the Niger Delta says some former leaders of the group have dismissed the threat as empty.
On Friday, President Yar’Adua is to meet several of the former militant leaders in the capital and “discuss the second phase of the amnesty and to get to know what they really want”, his spokesman says.
Mend declared a 60-day ceasefire on 15 July to allow for peace talks.
The group extended the ceasefire by a month in mid-September despite not having held any formal discussions.
It says it is fighting so that Niger Delta residents benefit more from their region’s oil wealth.
But much of the violence is carried out by criminal gangs.