PAP Budget allocation: Beneficiaries grumble in speculations, rain curses on Otuaro as Amnesty Boss Keep mute
By Our Correspondent
“You are becoming a monumental failure with recent events, abysmally low in communication with delegates, always reacting to issues, not been proactive”
“‘This man is the worst person so far, Mr chairman, tell us the cause of the delay in payment”
These were the words of a cross section of Beneficiaries of the presidential Amnesty Programme as Tarakirivoice takes investigation across different social media platforms to engage with them.
The beneficiaries of the presidential Amnesty Programme, who were frustrated by the prolonged silence by Dr Brutus Otuaro, the coordinator of the presidential Amnesty Programme, begins to question the competent of the Amnesty Boss.
” Today is 5th of February, yet the Amnesty office has not come up with any information as to why payment has not reflected, this current administrator is too local for my liking, somebody wey supposed dey village dey drink ogogoro serve juju, come be Amnesty Administrator, na waooo!” one said.
Tarakirivoice in our findings, came across a purported publication, that was said to have emanated from the presidency. According to the said publication.
“Nigeria’s government has almost tripled the budget for an amnesty programme for militants in its oil producing Niger Delta region.
In a statement released by the presidency, an additional 30 billion naira ($98.47 million) would be released for the former militants and an extra 5 billion naira added at some later stage.
This is viewed as a key factor in maintaining peace in the restive oil rich heartland where militants cut crude out put by as much as a third last year, by 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) to about 1.2 million bpd, from a high of about 2 million bpd.Under the 2009 amnesty programme, each former militant is entitled to 65,000 naira a month plus job training. But in March a special adviser to Nigeria’s president said the programme was facing a cash crunch.
“Currently the Amnesty Office has now paid up all ex-militants backlog of their stipends up to the end of 2016,” the statement added.
This comes even observers wonder for how long calm in the region will last as sporadic incidents of attacks by militants continue to happen”.
In view of the above findings, beneficiaries are hoping that by the reasons of the increase in the presidential Amnesty budgetary allocation by President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the monthly stipends starting from January 2025 will be increased.
This has caused the beneficiaries to be agitated and anxious to hear from the Amnesty office, inform of an official publication to keep them abreast, of the happenings of the presidential Amnesty office and not to keep them in the dark.
Tarakirivoice, try to get across to the media aide of the ongoing speculations but his number was not connected at as the time of filing this report.
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