Last week, it was the Leader of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF) Mujahid Dokubo-Asari that vociferously declared that the Amnesty Programme was a fraud. This was not the first time that Dokubo-Asari had vented his spleen on the Presidential Amnesty Programme and the characters who run it.
Last week, it was the Leader of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF) Mujahid Dokubo-Asari that vociferously declared that the Amnesty Programme was a fraud. This was not the first time that Dokubo-Asari had vented his spleen on the Presidential Amnesty Programme and the characters who run it.
Last month, it was General Boyloaf, a former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) that attacked the Amnesty Programme and stated that the programme is no longer doing what it was set out to do.
As a coalition of progressive groups in the Niger Delta, we wish to inform your Mr President that your Special Adviser on Niger Delta & Chairman of the Presidential Amnesty Programme is INCOMPETENT & CORRUPT.
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More importantly Mr. President, Kingsley Kuku does not truly mean well for you and all that you believe in.
Since his appointment as Special Adviser to the President early last year, Kingsley Kuku has MISMANAGED billions of naira of earmarked for the development of the Niger Delta while Niger Delta youths are shipped away to unaccredited training and educational institutions across MOST of the THIRD world.
Some of the new PDP legislators who today seek to undermine you are even beneficiaries of the Kingsley Kuku Amnesty largesse. This should not be so.
Mr. President, there is enough evidence to show that your Special Adviser on Niger Delta engineered the agitation by a group of Niger Delta youths to campaign for a Third Phase of the Amnesty Programme even when it is clear and beyond any doubts that these young men have never belonged to any militant camp in the Niger Delta.
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Mr. President, it is on record that Kingsley Kuku is the most travelled Presidential Aide in the Federal Republic of Nigeria even when it is well known that the Amnesty Programme spends a fortune in paying consultants who take care of and look over the amnesty trainees in the various countries of the world where they are kept.
Today, we hear the amnesty programme is now operates an office in the United Kingdom.
Over-bloated training contracts with little or no real value as well as expensive all-expense paid international and local trips in private jets are the channels through which the people of the Niger Delta continue to be fleeced by the activities of this kinsman of yours from Ondo State.
As a result of the fact that Kingsley Kuku has not been able to develop a proper selection and gleaning process, so-called ex-militants who can neither read or write are sent on expensive training programs to the countries mentioned above.
Some of these so-called amnesty trainees do not even possess the right frame of mind to productively engage in these training programs. As a result, reports of rape, theft and armed robbery have been received from training centers in South Africa, India, Sri Lanka and many others.
Not too long ago a batch of untrainable so-called trainees were shipped off to a third rated university in the United Kingdom.
More than 70% of these trainees barely had the educational ability to pass their first foundation exams and so they failed. Millions of dollars have been so wasted because the selection of these people was not meticulously made.
Mr. President, millions of dollars is being spent to train ex-militants on how to fly airplanes in South Africa.
This begs the question. Who will employ them when they return to Nigeria? Who will employ them to fly aircrafts? How many airlines operate in Nigeria?
Who bears the cost of all this? Who bears the cost of the private jets that Kingsley Kuku uses to traverse the Nigerian space every week?
How many Ministers or Special Advisers use private jets in the manner so described?
Mr President, it is time to rejig the Presidential Amnesty Programme and make it work for the greater good of the Niger Delta people.
Mr. President, the Niger Delta needs every penny it earns to be ploughed in the development of the region. We have suffered enough and it is not right that we be pillaged under your watch.
God bless Mr. President. God bless Nigeria.
Diepreye Jackson Dikibo
Publicity Secretary
Niger Delta Awareness Coalition & Ex Militants Leaders Forum
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