Ijaw leader calls for end to amnesty programme

President of the Ijaw Peoples Association (IPA) in Great Britain and Ireland, Francis Akpanari, has called for the termination of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP).

Akpanari does not think the programme has worked as conceptualised.

His stance spurred up anger in the Niger Delta at the weekend.

He said in an interview: “Once it didn’t happen that way, it means that the programme is not working.

“Back in London, so many of the amnesty boys that were supposed to be going to school have stopped because their school fees were not paid.

“And they started coming to the association to beg for money.

“I know about seven of them that have been working in London without going ahead with the programme. To me, it isn’t a successful programme.

“I don’t know if there are some people that benefited from it but the students that genuinely went to study, most of them didn’t complete their studies.

“The idea was good but it was mismanaged by so many different people. It is not successful, they better stop it”.

The Ijaw National Congress (INC) President, Prof. Benjamin Okabe, said it was wrong to call for the scrapping of PAP because of a few problems.

He said most of the problems critics referred to disappeared immediately Col. Milland Dixon Dikio (rtd) was appointed the Interim Coordinator of PAP.

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