Amnesty Programme Suffering Poor Funding – Coordinator

Five years into the Amnesty Programme declared by late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua for Niger Delta militants, the scheme is being plagued by shortage of funds, Technical Adviser and Head of Reintegration Department, Office of the President on Niger Delta, Mr. Larry Pepple has said.
Pepple, who made the disclosure during a phone-in programme organised by Silverbird Communications in Port Harcourt, said the programme is now starved of funds by the current administration.
He disclosed that programme covers about 30,000 persons who gave up their arms and embraced an amnesty pronounced by the late president as way to end the crisis in Niger Delta on June 25th, 2009.
In his words, “ In 2012, 2013 we were not having issues of delayed payment, but since 2014 there has been poor budgetary releases, and that has been a very big challenge. You must have heard state governors talking about it. You must have heard various agencies talking about it so we are one of the agencies also affected.”
The amnesty programme coordinator lamented that the current development will affect about 12,000 persons yet untrained, stating that about 3,642 persons are mainly non-militants drawn from impacted communities in the Niger Delta.
Pepple, however, disagreed that the situation was sending many beneficiaries back to the creeks into oil theft and sea piracy, as he maintained that it has been a huge success.
“The cost is not the concern here, but the end product”, Pepple maintained.
Speaking on the impact of the programme, Pepple said already about 66 pilots have been trained out of which 63 are air maintenance engineers.