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