FACTS OF THE MATTER

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF NIGERIA

PRESIDENTIAL AMNESTY PROGRAMME

 

RE: ULTIMATUM BY ‘LEADERS’ OF THE SECOND PHASE AMNESTY BENEFICIARIES

 

FACTS OF THE MATTER

 

The Presidential Amnesty Office has been reliably informed that certain persons that claim to be leaders of the Second Phase entrants into the Presidential Amnesty Programme (Amnesty Phase 2) met in Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa State, on Sunday, August 12, 2012 and resolved to among other things issue a one-week ultimatum to the Presidential Amnesty Office and its Chairman/Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta, Hon. Kingsley Kuku.

Their demands, as reported by a section of the media, included:

 Payment of the Transition Safety Allowance (TSA) to all the former Niger Delta agitators enrolled in the second phase of the Presidential Amnesty Programme.

 Sending of the Second Phase leaders to a two-week offshore entrepreneurship training programme.

They threatened, as we learnt, that if their demands were not met at the expiration of the one week ultimatum they would unleash mayhem in the Niger Delta and other parts of the country, including the capital city, Abuja.

It is true that the Presidential Amnesty Office budgeted for and is yet to commence payment of the Transition Safety Allowance (TSA) to the 6,166 amnesty beneficiaries enrolled in the Second Phase of the Amnesty Programme.

It is also a fact that the payment has been delayed due to no fault of the Amnesty Office but because these so-called leaders of the second phase entrants into the Amnesty Programme have shamelessly and illegally altered the personal banking records of some of the former agitators listed in the programme through them to suit their whims.

They were able to perpetrate this criminal and unlawful alterations partly by conniving with bank officials and also due to the fact that those enlisted in the Second Phase of the Amnesty Programme did not belong to any of the defunct militant camps in the Niger Delta. Rather, they were enlisted in the programme via allotments to this so-called camp-less ‘Generals’ (leaders) by the Federal Government in 2010. Capitalising on this loose arrangement, the so-called leaders have been tampering with the personal banking details of persons enlisted in the programme through them.

However, conscious of extant financial regulations and keen on transparency and accountability, the Presidential Amnesty Office has continued to resist the incessant doctoring of the personal accounts and records of persons enlisted in the Second Phase of the programme by their so-called leaders.

The Amnesty office has in several meetings with these leaders registered its contempt at the alterations of personal bank records of beneficiaries enlisted in the programme and warned of the dire consequences of such acts. Indeed, the office is aware that several of the beneficiaries wrongfully and illegally delisted by their so-called leaders have gone to the police and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to report this very serious matter. On its part, the Amnesty Office is resolving some of the disputes arising from the illegal doctoring of this Phase Two list internally.

To buttress its position on transparency and accountability, the Amnesty Office has severally stopped or delayed the payment of stipends and allowances to accounts strongly suspected to have been tampered with by the so-called leaders of the Second Phase, pending when the anomalies were rectified.

It must be stated that immediately the unscrupulous antics of the purported leaders were noticed, the Amnesty Office promptly engaged forensic experts to tidy up the demobilization records of the entire 6,166 persons enlisted in the Second Phase of the programme. The team is carrying out a painstaking assignment and until it finishes its work, the Amnesty Office will not pay the Transition Safety Allowance (TSA) to the suspicious personal accounts supplied by the leaders of the Second Phase beneficiaries of the programme.

No amount of blackmail, campaign of calumny or protests will make the Amnesty Office or the Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Programme shift position on this insistence on transparency and accountability in the running of the Amnesty Programme.

We, however, assure the 6,166 persons genuinely enrolled in the second phase of the Presidential Amnesty Programme that once the forensic experts complete the thorough verification of their demobilisation records, including their personal account details, they will be paid their Transition Safety Allowance. The ultimate aim of the office is to ensure that this money does not end up in the pockets of their very insensitive and greedy ‘leaders.’

On the matter of entrepreneurship training for the Phase Two leaders, even when this is not a right, the Amnesty Office concedes that efforts are being made to provide such training to them. We wish to however clarify that this will not materialize till other leaders of the ex-agitators enlisted in the first phase of the programme round off their own entrepreneurship training programme. We are currently putting finishing touches to plans to deploy the first phase leaders to entrepreneurship training centres.

Let it be known that the Amnesty Office will not succumb to blackmail or intimidation by persons that are keen on breaching laid down financial rules. It is in the light of this that the office expects the nation’s security agencies to deal decisively with persons, including the so-called Amnesty Phase Two leaders, who attempt to breach public peace either in the Niger Delta or any part of the country.

 

 

DANIEL ALABRAH

HEAD, MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONS

PRESIDENTIAL AMNESTY OFFICE

ABUJA