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Diri seeks continuation of presidential amnesty programme
Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State has called on the Federal Government not to end the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), saying the programme is yet to achieve its objectives.
Diri, who made the call on Friday, insisted that PAP is yet to achieve its mandate, saying even the disarmament phase of the scheme has not been fully realised as arms and ammunition are still in the wrong hands in the Niger Delta.
The governor, who spoke when he received the Interim Administrator, PAP, Major General 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.
In 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?
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“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 the process is not 100 per cent completed.
“Now I will like to look more at 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 wrong for anybody at this point to bring the amnesty programme to a close. That will amount to being insensitive to what is going on in the region.”
