The Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri, has appealed to the Federal Government to jettison any plan to shut down the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP).
Diri insisted that PAP had yet to achieve its mandate saying even the disarmament phase of the scheme had not been fully realised as arms and ammunition were still in the wrong hands in the Niger Delta.
The governor, who spoke when he received the Interim Administrator, PAP, Maj.-Gen. Barry Ndiomu (retd), 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?
“So while we are in the final stage of reintegration, you and I know that within our Niger Delta, we still have very many arms, non state actors are in possession of arms, well that has been said to be completed but I like to state clearly here that, that process is not 100% completed.
“Now I’ll like to look more on the issue of reintegration. 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 very wrong for anybody at this point to bring the amnesty programme to a close. That will amount to insensitive to what is going on in the region”.
While acknowledging that the Federal Government had soft-pedalled in its decision to shut down the programme, Diri said the best gift the government could give to the Niger Delta people was to allow the continuity of PAP.
The governor urged Ndiomu to deal with the challenges in the programme and write his name in gold insisting that the problems were not enough to contemplate closing the scheme.
He said: “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.
“As you have rightly stated, yes, there are challenges, but then the Amnesty programme has also recorded some degree of success. Those challenges are the reasons our people keep coming and going. So, for me at every given opportunity, it is a time to write your name in gold and indeed, writing the name of your state Bayelsa in gold.
“If you have come and found certain challenges, we know you have the capacity to confront those challenges. Whatever that you can do to ensure that Amnesty programme will continue to exist, please do them and let our people be the final beneficiaries of this program”.
The governor called on Ndiomu to avoid the temptation of politicising the amnesty office saying that before the births of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the people were one and the same.
He said: “I’ve always reminded us that before APC and PDP, we were one and the same people. Those, who sacrificed their lives, like Boro did, didn’t do that for political reasons and therefore, I’ll like to call on you not to politicize the amnesty programme”.
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.
Addressing Ndiomu, he said: “Please, whatever that you will do, not to forget the state of Bayelsa under your watch, please do it. Let us not regret after. Most times we are like that tree that when it fruits, it falls to people far away and if you are under the tree directly, you will not have any fruit, the fruits are going far away, we’ve seen that over and over in our state, from our sons and daughters.
“Most of them at the end of the day will regret that if I knew, I would have done something. I encourage you to do whatever you want to do now. We are not the only state we know. But whatever you can do for your state, do it as you are doing for every other state in the Niger Delta”.
Diri raised an objection over the domiciling of the amnesty programme in Abuja and said his administration had donated a parcel of land to erect a befitting office for the scheme and bring it home.
“The amnesty programme as it operates today is more of Abuja, it’s almost an alien programme to our people, except people who will visit your offices in Abuja and I’ll like to call on you to ensure that the amnesty programme is indiginised by sighting the headquarters of the presidential Amnesty programme in Yenagoa in Bayelsa state.To this end, the state government has already donated a parcel of land for that purpose”.
Diri called for collaboration among the state government, the amnesty programme and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to avoid duplication of projects and programmes.
On the ongoing clean-up of Ogoni, the governor noticed the snail-paced movement of the programme and reminded the federal government that many areas of the Niger Delta needed remediation.
He said: “We have also been agitating that the clean-up in Niger Delta shouldn’t be for Ogoni alone. We all know that the the whole environment of the Niger Delta has been polluted. Bayelsa is not an exception, so remedying our environment should be one of the key responsibilities that PAP should also look into in partnership with other ministries and agencies of government.
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