Presidential Amnesty Programme partners Navy to empower ex-agitators

The Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) is collaborating with the Nigerian Navy to develop the country, especially the Niger Delta Region through the training of ex-agitators.

This was disclosed when the Interim Administrator of PAP, Major-general Barry Tariye Ndiomu (retired) received the Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo in his office in Abuja. While Ndiomu was represented by PAP Head of Reintegration, Wilfred Musa, who assured of PAP’S readiness to explore a beneficial working relationship as well as continued partnership, which the Programme would fully leverage to train its delegates.

“We’ll be very happy to explore ways and means to bring this collaboration to reality. I want to believe that amongst other things, this is the highest level of this meeting. I was amazed by the garment-making unit of the school. It is so elaborate. We have run dozens of trainings in the past but we have never had the opportunity to work with any of the academies that has the amount of infrastructure and the layout of what we saw at the naval engineering school,” he said.

“They make the garment there and they brand them, they stitch and they package. What that tells us is that we can have our delegates acquire that skill and also understand what it means to specialise and they will have a good appreciation of the value chain.”

In his remarks, the Chief of Naval Engineering, Rear Admiral Sdel Ladan, who led the visiting delegation on behalf of Gambo, said the visit was a reciprocal one made to consolidate and deepen the growing partnership with the Naval Engineering College.

The Presidential Amnesty Programme was established by President Musa Yar’adua’s administration in 2009 as part of the government’s measures to reduce militancy in the oilrich Niger Delta region.