ENUGU, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- The Governor of Bayelsa State, Douye Diri has called on the Federal Government of Nigeria to discard any plan to shut down the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP).
The Governor said that PAP had yet to achieve its mandate, adding that the disarmament phase of the scheme had not been fully realised as arms and ammunition were still in wrong hands in the Niger Delta.
Diri made the call when he received the Interim Administrator, PAP, Maj.-Gen. Barry Ndiomu (rtd), in Government House, Yenagoa.
He warned that any attempt to shut down the programme would plunge the region into another round of unrest.
His words: “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?
“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 per cent completed.
“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-pedaled in its decision to shut down the programme, Governor Diri said the best gift the government could give to the Niger Delta people was to allow the continuity of PAP.
He urged Ndiomu to avoid the temptation of politicizing the amnesty office, stressing that the people were one and same, before the births of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Diri therefore, called for collaboration among the state government, the amnesty programme and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) to avoid duplication of projects and programmes.
Speaking on the ongoing clean-up of Ogoni, the Governor noticed the snail-paced movement of the programme and reminded the Federal Government of Nigeria that many areas of the Niger Delta needed remediation.
“I’ll like to call on you to ensure that the amnesty programme is indigenised by siting 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,” he said.