‘Despite Gulping N243bn in FourYears, AmnestyYet to Achieve Mandate’

Even though the federal government spent a whopping N243 billion on the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) in the Niger Delta from 2010 to 2014, the programme has yet to achieve its objectives, a report by an international development firm has said.

The report by Nextier Security, Peace and Development (SPD) described the programme as too expensive to maintain and marred by corruption and patrimonial sentiment.

The report, which was unveiled in Abuja yesterday, noted that the amnesty programme had failed to achieve its mandate despite gulping a whopping sum of N243 billion between 2010 and 2014 alone.

Consequently, the reporºt urged the federal government to devolve the activities of the programme into state oil commissions, noting that the amnesty programme was the most expensive of such initiatives in the world.

Specifically, the report admitted that the programme was too expensive to maintain, as well as being marred by corruption, nepotism, prebendal and patrimonial sentiments, the organisation said the report was to trigger debate on the programme after 10 years of its operation.

Like most bureaucratic institutions nationwide, the report noted that the amnesty programme “now suffers from lack of transparency, consistency, and effective management of resources.”

Although 20,000 beneficiaries had gone through various formal education and vocational training programmes under the initiative, to address the feeling of exclusion, the report said the plight of excluded people and ravaged communities should be factored into the transition.

The report explained that corruption should be significantly reduced through effective oversight functions, deployment of robust monitoring and evaluation mechanisms as well as prosecution