Leaders of ex-agitators in the Niger Delta region have called on the federal government to review the annual budgetary allocation to the Presidential Amnesty Programme which they claim has been stagnated at N65 billion since 2009.
They made this call at an interactive session in Benin City, Edo State capital organized by the PAP.
The former agitators said the current economic realities and the value of the naira has made it near impossible for the needs of the former agitators and their followers to be met.
They also raised concern that the primary aim of the PAP was diminishing as it was being drawn into several other issues in the Niger Delta instead squarely facing issues that have to do with amnesty. “When the budget of N65b was started in 2009, the value of dollar was N65, how much is the value of the naira now, how much is a bag of rice now, and how much is a litre of fuel now?” one of the former agitators asked.
In his presentation, the Interim Administrator of the PAP, Major General Barry Nduomu (rtd) who was represented by the Head of Reorientation of PAP, Wilfred Musa said the PAP had to temporarily suspend the scholarship to allow for those already in school to graduate and to ensure that the activities of PAP was managed in such a way to avoid debts accumulation
He called on the former agitators to join hands together and make the programme work, warning that “If anything happens to this boat, all of us will be affected. Any small thing petition, you have a responsibility to defend this boat, you are drawing unnecessary attention to the programme and that is why every time, it is about EFCC, ICPC.”
On the scholarship, he said “In the last one year about 900 of them graduated so we now have space to take more but there are issues, we realize that a good number of our boys and girls in school fail. We went round the schools, we had meetings with 66 schools, 300 of them were withdrawn because they could not make 1.00 at the beginning of their 300 hundred level. Do you know how much that is? Because these schools are into business, they will not tell us when the students are in their first year, they will wait till year three before they will tell us that our students are not meeting up, we have to blacklist some schools because of this. Classroom is not meant for everybody, there is vocation, there is empowerment and other areas of the amnesty are available. The amnesty scholarship is the most robust scholarship in the history of scholarship awards in Nigeria.” He said.
Nduomu said the objective of the session was to share information and compare notes to bring up the vision and the mission of the current administration of the PAP.
Speaking at the session, the National Chairman of 3rd Phase Presidential Amnesty Leaders, ‘General’ Elaye Slaboh said there was need for the periodic interaction to give them the needed information.
He said “This is a very good one and if this kind of interactive session have been taking place since the onset of the programme, a lot of persons may have been reintegrated into the society, we still have some issues that are still disturbing us today, the leaders have come out openly to express their views affecting them and the office has also given us theirs that is also disturbing the them.”
