We Deserve Hot PAP

A couple of days ago, it was reported that the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) had called on its beneficiaries to prepare to be tutored on some of the things that would qualify them to own and operate modular refineries following the plan by government to integrate artisanal refiners into Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
According to the report, the Interim Administrator of PAP, Col. Milland Dikio (rtd), said that the scheme was prepared to train the ex-agitators in the business of refining crude oil in order to deepen manpower development and enhance the nation’s refining capacity for economic prosperity.
He was said to have spoken in Abuja at a summit organised by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Budget and Economic Planning in collaboration with the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Niger Delta Affairs and Economic Diversification.
Represented by an aide, Dikio said that training and engaging ex-agitators on local refining of crude oil would help achieve a rapid development of the region while reducing oil theft, unemployment and environmental pollution. It would also afford them and their communities a better sense of belonging.
Established on July 25, 2009 by the administration of late President Umar Yar’Adua, PAP has been seen to operate in a style that remains largely unclear to major stakeholders and observers alike. While there are those who think that, after 11 years of sustained funding and under the direction of six co-ordinators, the programme’s reported accomplishments are still not up to scratch, quite a number of the others would rather submit that the scheme has ticked all the relevant boxes, so far. They believe that, against whatever obstacles, it has served to restore some measure of stability in the region.
It would be recalled that a total of 30,000 ex-agitators, including 822 young women, were captured in the PAP database under the Federal Government’s disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation (DDR) programme. Also not arguable is the fact that, through the scheme, a significant number of these ex-militants have acquired highly saleable entrepreneurial and vocational skills from some reputable institutions within and outside Nigeria. Mention should also include those who are still in school and others still undergoing tutelage in the hands of the agency’s skills training contractors.
The only snag in all of this is that PAP does not appear to have sufficiently demonstrated any capacity to adequately empower and re-integrate these graduates back to respectable society. I say this with respect to the programme’s objective.
It is even more troubling to hear that about 8,195 beneficiaries billed to undergo training in agriculture were still on standby as at 2018. A case of agriculture taking backstage? What’s more, there were even rumours recently that government was already considering bringing the Niger Delta amnesty programme to an abrupt end, principally on account of the rising demand by some other regions of the country for a similar arrangement to be established for their own repentant renegades.
Meanwhile, crude oil for which the region and, by extension, the rest of Nigeria receives frequent global mention continues to lose its pre-eminence in the international energy market.
Just before the time of floating the amnesty programme in 2009, Nigeria’s crude oil output had dropped significantly to about 700,000 barrels per day, from an OPEC-approved daily ceiling of 2.2 million barrels. Hence, those reports that the country recorded production shortfalls estimated at N8.7 billion ($58 million) for the first five months of that year.
Like the other government creations intended to address Niger Delta’s peculiar issues, PAP has been dogged by its own challenges and contradictions, including high-level corruption, frequent change of leadership, inadequate funding, poor choice of seminar and workshop venues, exclusion of major stakeholders in decision making, contractual breaches, and late remittance of beneficiaries’ allowances, among others.
For example, it was in the news recently that a coalition of the 2017 and 2018 sets of Niger Delta amnesty students had petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari to release their monthly stipend of N70,000 and sessional textbook allowance of N40,000 unpaid for three years under Prof. Charles Dokubo, the erstwhile PAP co-ordinator; failing which they risk being forced to withdraw from studies.
Analysts have argued that the Federal Government should do all it can to fund PAP as to enable it fully re-integrate the ex-agitators and discourage them from a return to carrying arms. They fear that the country already has enough insecurity problems at hand and cannot afford to engage in one more war from another front.
Indeed, driven by their individual frustrations and the serious state of underdevelopment in their region, some Niger Delta ex-agitators had carried out protests during which they warned against being pushed to consider returning to their former naval outposts. This had apparently forced Dikio to declare, at a recent meeting with the region’s major stakeholders in Yenagoa, that such protests had not yielded anything other than scaring away investors.
“The approach of protest over the years has scared many businesses away from the region. Therefore, we must find creative ways to bring back businesses…
“Amnesty is not just the programme, there are a lot in the package. The programme does not only accommodate arms bearers alone, but also the impacted communities in the region,” he appealed.
On their part, the Niger Delta stakeholders were said to have advised the PAP administrator to consider agriculture as a major component of his empowerment and re-integration plan. Their advice was obviously based on the realisation that oil is a transient commodity, hence the need for the region to return to developing a more sustaining endeavour.
In all, it is already clear that PAP needs an overhaul to enable it tick every box. Yes, even the Niger Delta stakeholders, while not opposed to an end to the programme, advise that such move should only come after the beneficiaries have been fully rehabilitated and re-integrated back to society in line with its main goal.

By: Ibelema Jumbo