The Niger Delta Ex-Agitators Forum (NDEAF) has threatened to stage a massive protest over alleged neglect of the phase 3 leaders in the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP).
They made the threat via a memo jointly signed by the group’s leaders from Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Edo and Ondo states.
Names on the memo include, ‘Generals’ Able Showman (Edo); Birinumughan Jesse (Delta); Aboy Brown (Ondo); Godgift Igoli (Akwa Ibom); Oloye Ofovwei Clement (Delta); Kenneth Kpea (Rivers); and Whoknows Tomorrow (Bayelsa).
Their grouse include, verification of phase 3 leaders, the issue of the missing slots that were misappropriated by the previous administration, issue of phase 3 leaders training and empowerment, impacted community slots for phase 3 leaders for training and empowerment and the issue of those leaders that voluntarily surrendered their arms and ammunitions to the Federal Government that was not documented, among other reactions.
While registering their displeasures in the memo, they also pointed out how they had contributed relentlessly towards sustainable peace and stability in the Niger Delta region.
“Therefore, we vow to henceforth, stiffly resist any form of neglect and further short-changing of the benefits meant for us by any factor or element either in the commission or in the government,” the group said.
Meanwhile, the Interim Administrator of the Presidential Programme (PAP), Col Milland Dixon Dikio (rtd), has said the era of servicing contractors and their cronies was over in the programme.
He said efforts would now be concentrated on training ex-agitators.
Dikio said that the PAP would no longer patronize contractors at the expense of the real owners of the programme which are the ex-agitators, just as it would no longer fund the scholarship of students in areas that are not of comparative advantage to the region.
He stated this in Yenagoa, during a parley with the leadership of the first phase of the programme.
Dikio decried the existing situation which allows contractors to gulp 85 per cent of the total funds accrued to the PAP, while those the programme was instituted for are left with the remaining fraction, stressing that it was hardly enough for training and empowering them.
He said, “The PAP will no longer be contractor-driven. We are not going to engage in tokenism.
“I am not going to award contracts or go into projects just for the heck of it. Never, I won’t. Rather I will focus on ‘train, mentor and employ’.
“That is our new philosophy. The same applies to scholarship. Scholarship is a privilege and not a right.