Omon-Julius Onabu
Ex-militant leader under the Presidential Amnesty Programme, (PAP), Mr. Kingsley Muturu, has accused the leadership of the programme of insincerity in the execution of activities of the programme designed to impact positively the lives of youths in Niger Delta.
Muturu, who is a peace ambassador and Delta State Chairman, Phase 2 of the amnesty programme, made the allegation at his country home in Bomadi, yesterday.
He noted that although the programme had, between the period of 2012 and 2015, trained artisans for a number of months and the beneficiaries provided starter-packs on graduation, it suffered setbacks under successive leaders amid certain scandalous allegations.
He expressed concern that some of those who should benefit from the programme had been left unattended for over 10 years running, alleging some deceitful manipulations.
Muturu said, “I am pained as a leader of ex-agitators when seeing manipulations in the amnesty office, to the extent that beneficiaries since 2009 have not gone for training or to school till date.
“I want the PAP leadership to respond to some salient issues: Is it proper to call beneficiaries to Lagos or elsewhere, lodge them in hotels for three days and give them peanuts as packages without any training?
“PAP Phase 2 has 6,166 (sux thousand one hundred and sixty-six) beneficiaries them have been trained and how many are not and from whose camps? How many of them are benefiting from the monthly stipend?
“Colonel Dixion Dikio (rtd) said that out the 30,000 beneficiaries of PAP, 22,000 have been trained. We want him to publish names of trained beneficiaries and the camps they belong. Let him also publish the eight thousand untrained beneficiaries and the camps they belong. He should also publish the number of impacted community slots.”
On the Kaiama looting, Muturu said: “we want the PAP office to tell us their findings on the looting of the warehouse equipment meant for training of beneficiaries at Kaiama. I personally believe the PAP office is in a better position to tell us what transpired because the looting was apparently orchestrated.
“More so, relationship between the PAP office and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) was so cordial that no investigation has been carried out on this looting till date.”
He therefore called on the federal government to investigate the PAP, saying many of the programme managers have since derailed.
