Angry Youths Give Quit Notice To Amnesty Prog Coordinator

Angry youths from the Niger Delta have issued a quite notice to the Interim Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, PAP, retired Major General Barry Ndiomu, even as they have said that Ndiomu should not wait to be disgraced out of office.
The youths who described themselves as critical stakeholders from the region said in a statement on Friday that Ndiomu had overstayed his welcome in the amnesty office and needed to be shown the way out in the interest of the scheme and that of the peace of the Niger Delta.
Coming under the aegis of the Coalition of Niger Delta Patriots, they said Ndiomu ought to have left the office since March 31 this year when his tenure expired and that his continued stay in office was against natural justice.
This is even as the group has commended the president, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu for what they call the president’s disposition to fairness in the quality and spread of his appointments so far.
President-General of the group, Ambassador Theo Whiskey and the Secretary-General, Chief Timipre Ambaowei said “Ndiomu should not take our silence for stupidity. He has wreaked the amnesty programme and made nonsense of the dreams of the founding fathers of PAP. He is dancing on the grave of those who died in the course of the struggle. His time is up and he must leave now.

“He was appointed to be in office for six months. His administration is a waste. He knows very little or nothing about the genesis and objectives of the amnesty programme and that explains why he is not relating well with the authentic stakeholders, including the repentant former militants.

“It is even laughable that some people considered to be on his pay roll are trying to bend the hand of the federal government and secure a re-appointment for the interim administrator.

“It will not work. The plot is dead on arrival as we will resist any attempt to retain Ndiomu in office.”

The advocates of Ndiomu’s sack said they were in support of those who have, in the past, called for his head and that the best thing that could happen to the amnesty programme and the Niger Delta as a whole, was for the new National Security Adviser, NSA, Nuhu Ribadu to remove the PAP boss from office.

In March this year, just a few days to the end of the tenure of the PAP coordinator, a group of former agitators had met and issued a communiqué urging the then president, Muhammadu Buhari to replace Ndiomu with someone with vast knowledge of the sole aim of the programme and not those who enrich themselves at the expense of the Niger-Delta region.

In the communique which was signed by Gen. Paul Johnson and Solomon Adu, Chairmen, Phase 2, Bayelsa and Delta States, after a meeting with ex-agitators across the region in Port Harcourt, had said the sack was necessary due to his inability to pilot the affairs of the scheme with sincerity of purpose, rather creating division that could jeopardize the peace of the region.

They had also accused him of delisting names of real beneficiaries of the programme and blatantly refusing to pay the stipend of over 7,000 delegates going to over six months, without any reasonable claims.

According to them, “Ndiomu has shown himself as an enemy of the Niger Delta; he has succeeded in causing division among our people with the sole aim to divide and rule. Instead of paying us our stipends, he rather prefers using our monies to get cheap publicity from few notable stakeholders in the region.

“In a recent publication in an online media, some stakeholders hailed Ndiomu on floating cooperatives to empower ex-agitators. If we may ask, who are these ex-agitators that will be empowered by Ndiomu through these white-elephant schemes? Is it the ones he refused to pay their monthly stipends going to over six months? He is then a joker.

“Barry Ndiomu should know that the presidential amnesty programme was solely established to cater for the ex-agitators; doing otherwise by leaving out some of the ex-agitators is for the detriment of the Nigeria state as a whole and the Niger-Delta in particular”

The stakeholders also hailed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for over his style of leadership since the day he assumed office, particularly the courage to put a stop to the fuel subsidy regime as well as the dissolution of boards of parastatals and agencies, saying the moves were for the general good.
They said with the pronouncements and actions of the president so far, there were high hopes that Nigeria would soon take its pride of place in the comity of nations.
“President Tinubu has started well. His appointments so far show spread. They are an indication that the president means well for this country. That is why we believe that he will do the right thing as far as the amnesty programme is concerned.”