Twenty-seven ex-militants arrested and detained in Ghana for unruly conduct during their vocational training have been released, Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta, Kingsley Kuku, has said.

Kuku, who supervises the Presidential Amnesty Programme, warned the youths that government would no longer condone unruly conduct by former militant agitators in the oil region currently being offered skills and vocational training in reintegration centres across the country and abroad.

The Amnesty Office in a statement in Abuja on Tuesday said eight of the trainees who actually heckled the hotel staff been repatriated as part of measures to forestall a recurrence.

Kuku disclosed that the unruly youths might be expelled from the programme upon their return from Ghana.

He said, "government will not hesitate to mete out severe punishment to persons who under any guise or attempt to drag the name of the country in the mud."

Kuku while in Ghana reiterated the resolve of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to fast track the rehabilitation and reintegration of the about 26,000 Niger Delta ex-militants currently enrolled in the Amnesty Programme.

But he cautioned the former militant agitators to desist from acts that could endanger the overwhelming support the amnesty programme currently enjoys in Nigeria and abroad.

"In line with the reintegration component of the Amnesty Programme, the Federal Government through the Amnesty Office, on Thursday January 27, 2011, dispatched 212 transformed Niger Delta ex-militants to six vocational training centres in Ghana where they have since been undergoing vocational training at the famous National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI), to become qualified Welders," the statement added.

The NVTI is reputedly one of Ghana's leading vocational training centres, renowned for producing some of the best Welders in the West Africa sub-region. A total of 37 similar offshore centres providing services in vocations/skills acquisition and education have been contracted to partner the Amnesty Programme on the reintegration of the transformed ex-militants of the Niger Delta.

"Prior to their posting to training and vocational centres, the ex-militants had successfully gone through nonviolence transformational training at the Presidential Amnesty Demobilisation Camp in Obubra, Cross River State.