By 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 on Wednesday at his country home in Bomadi.
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 over the fact that some of those who should benefit from the programme had been left unattended to for over ten 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 (six thousand one hundred and sixty-six) beneficiaries. How many of 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.
“How can the PAP office be paying school fees of some students without paying the monthly seventy thousand naira they are entitled to? There’s foul play in this issue and I have facts to prove.
“These students are from Niger Delta and their names are in the office database, I advise the PAP office to do the needful to resolve the students’ plight.
“The 72 students sent to Copenhagen-Malmo Maritime Academy, Sweden, for a nine-month training on Nautical Science in 2014, returned to Nigeria disappointed because the certificates issued to them were rejected when presented for work.
“More so, they were logded in a hotel, lectured in the hotel for six months as Desk Officers Class Viii and Engine Officers Class Viii without giving them the expected Diploma certificate, which training was a scam. These students lodged their complaint with the PAP office with no attention given till date”, he said.
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.
“I would want the PAP office to give answers to all the issues raised, failure to which I will call names, especially those behind the Kaiama looting because I’m a living witness and we will want the heavens to fall.
“It is apparent that the PAP office is secretive with scandals, substituting names of beneficiaries in our camps with names from elsewhere. I can also give names of people used to substitute real beneficiaries of the programme, if the need be.
“Those behind the appointment of these people to run the programme down are enemies of Niger Delta, as everyone is coming to do business and go, shortchanging true beneficiaries of the programme”.
He called on the Federal Government, in line with its claim of meaning well for the programme, to investigate the PAP from the hierarchy, saying that many of the programme managers have since derailed.
“We want an end to this unacceptable treatment and we call on the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to be sincere with execution of the programme in accordance with its blueprint”, he said.
