'Don't try to end amnesty programme', Gov Diri warns Buhari

Governor Diri at Okaka Prison

Governor Diri

Nathan Nwakamma

Gov. Douye Diri of Bayelsa on Friday urged the Federal Government to jettison any plan to end the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), saying the programme was yet to achieve its objectives.

Diri said even the disarmament phase of the scheme has not been fully realised as arms and ammunition are still in the wrong hands in the Niger Delta.

The governor, who spoke when he received the Interim Administrator, PAP, retired Maj.-Gen. Barry Ndiomu, in Government House, Yenagoa, warned that any attempt to shut down the programme would plunge the region into another round of unrest.

He said: “The amnesty programme has three legs. The first is disarmament, a process said to be completed; then the demobilisation leg and finally, the reintegration leg. On the issue of disarmament, can we completely convince ourselves that we have been able to completely disarm the Niger Delta of armaments in our region?

“The reintegration is more like a continuous process of building human capacity and for you to continue to build human capacity, it follows that the amnesty programme must be on and I’m happy while listening to you that you have already taken that up.

“It will be wrong for anybody at this point to bring the amnesty programme to a close. That will amount to being insensitive to what is going on in the region.”

While acknowledging that the Federal Government has soft-pedalled in its decision to shut down the programme, Diri said the best gift the government could give to the Niger Delta people is to allow the continuity of PAP.

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The governor urged Ndiomu to deal with the challenges in the programme and write his name in gold, insisting that the problems are too huge to contemplate closing the scheme.

“Let me use this opportunity of your courtesy call to call on the FG that the best thing and the best gift to the Niger Delta is to continue to support and keep the Presidential Amnesty Programme going.

The governor called on Ndiomu to avoid the temptation of politicising the amnesty office, saying that before the birth of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the people were one and the same.

“I’ve always reminded us that before APC and PDP, we were one and the same people. Those, who sacrificed their lives, as Boro did, didn’t do that for political reasons and therefore, I’ll like to call on you not to politicize the amnesty programme”, he said.

Diri observed that Ndiomu was the third person from Bayelsa to man the amnesty office and appealed to him to carry the state along in all his activities to avoid regrets.

On his part, Ndiomu solicited the support of the Bayelsa government for his administration.

He said that he was poised to reform the amnesty programme to make it results-oriented and more impactful to the beneficiaries.

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