Amnesty Office Clarifies N187m Stationery Supply Contract Awards

Olusegun Samuel in Yenagoa

The Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) yesterday clarified that a N187 million consultancy service and stationery supply contracts were awarded before the Interim Administrator, Col. Milland Dikio assumed office.

The PAP said reports claiming that the contracts were awarded under Dikio’s tenure were false, misleading and designed desperately to discredit the interim administrator.

This was contained in a statement by the Special Adviser to Dikio on Media, Mr. Neotabase Egbe yesterday, saying the incident occurred in 2017, and the circular for the query succinctly captured the date and other details.

The statement said it was inconceivable for the reports to give the impression that the Senate summoned Dikio for allegedly paying N187million for supply of stationery and consultancy fee for end of year meeting and vocational training.

It said if the authors were not acting the scripts of their paymasters, they would have launched an investigation to fulfill the time tested and age-long journalistic ethics of factual reporting.

It stressed that the notice of the query which had 2017 payment voucher would have ordinarily made them avoid the gross misrepresentation of the issue.

He said the amnesty office “at no time received series of invitations from the senate as claimed by the reports. Dikio has high regard for institutions of government saddled with the responsibility of carrying out its statutory function.

“The report widely circulated in some national dailies does not represent the true situation of things. The incident for the supply of stationery and consultancy services happened in 2017.

“It was therefore surprising that for obvious monetary gains, mischief and deliberate action to discredit the Interim Administrator, the authors of the story couldn’t verify from the office.

“Even the nomenclature of the office from the circular shows that the occupant of the office was still referred to as Special Adviser, whereas since the coming of Dikio, it has been rightly changed as Administrator”, the statement said.

It urged journalists to always cross check with the amnesty office to avoid such embarrassing reports, saying Dikio’s mantra of probity and accountability remained changed.