The Coordinator of Presidential Amnesty Programme, retired Brig.-Gen Paul Boroh, said it had stabilised the relatively volatile Niger Delta through its various interventions.
Boroh, who is also the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta, said this while briefing newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday.
According
to him, the Amnesty Office has achieved successes in the ongoing phased
re-integration of the amnesty programme which includes the empowerment
of 2,500 ex-agitators and full employment for 400 others.
He said the amnesty office engaged 78 vendors on Dec. 4, 2015 to empower additional 1,225 amnesty beneficiaries.
Boroh
said this empowerment would lead to the exit of the beneficiaries from
the programme and the Federal Government would be able to save N955.5
million annually it used to pay as stipends.
He said that those who had been trained and empowered would create employment opportunities in the Niger Delta.
The
coordinator said that his office recently carried out verification to
ascertain the exact number of beneficiaries of its scholarship.
“This is to examine its success and streamline the scheme in line with the re-integration stage of the amnesty programme," he said.
Boroh
said 3,849 students in 22 countries were to be screened, while 2,789
students in 28 institutions of higher learning in Nigeria would also
undergo screening.
According to him, the
Scholarship Scheme is part of the human capacity building development
project under the amnesty programme with 30,000 beneficiaries.
The
coordinator said the amnesty programme was a unique window of
opportunity to bring peace, stability and economic development to the
nine oil producing states in the region.
''The
amnesty programme is one of the major reasons for the reduction of
kidnapping, oil bunkering and other vices in the region," he said.
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