President Muhammadu Buhari has appointed a Coordinator for
the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), which provides payments and
scholarships to Niger Delta ex-militants.
The new Coordinator, retired Brigadier General P.T. Boroh,
will double as the Special Advisor on the Niger Delta. He enters the position
after it lay vacant for some months.
The person to hold the position in the administration of
Goodluck Jonathan, Kingsley Kuku, was
summoned last week for questioning by the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC). An EFCC source told Premium Times that Mr. Kuku and two
colleagues are suspected of embezzlement and diversion of public funds worth
hundreds of millions of naira.
The appointment comes less than a week after President
Buhari’s official visit to the US, where
he made controversial comments about his intention to address issues,
including the amnesty program, in the Niger Delta.
“I hope you have a copy of the election results,” Mr. Buhari
responded to a question at the United States Institute of Peace. “The
constituents, for example, [who] gave me 97% [of the vote] cannot in all
honesty be treated on some issues with constituencies that gave me 5%.”
Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina said in a statement that
Mr. Boroh’s appointment will hopefully resolve the PAP’s failure to make
payments to its beneficiaries, some of whom are on scholarship abroad and have
been stranded or kicked out of their institutions when their source of money
was cut off. A group of thirteen ex-militants, for example, was
sent away from the Lufthansa Flight Training School in Frankfurt, Germany,
due to the nonpayment of their fees. Other Niger Delta ex-militants have also
been sent packing by their various institutions in South Africa, Russia,
Ukraine, and several countries in Europe.
No comments:
Post a Comment