By Mike Odiegwu, Port Harcourt
An ex-militant leader, John Ebi, has decried the condition of Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) beneficiaries saying that most of them were trapped in their various training centers following nonpayment of amnesty contractors.
Ebi, who is the Chairman of the Third Phase Amnesty, said the beneficiaries were hit by hunger virus, which he described as deadlier than the Coronavirus pandemic.
He described as unjustifiable the suspension of all programmes at the reintegration phase of PAP, saying the development had compounded the hardship of ex-militants.
Ebi, in a statement on Thursday, raised a suspicion that there was a ploy by the Federal Government to gradually jettison the scheme by first stopping the payment of contractors.
He said: “Payment of stipends is an integral part of the Amnesty programme. The bulk of the programme lies in the empowerment and training sector.
“Most of our colleagues are presently caught with the coronavirus pandemic lockdown in the region. These boys are facing untold hardship in the various training centres due to hunger, which is deadlier than the Covid-19 itself.
“Most contractors took loans from local lenders to enable them execute their jobs and these loans are now yielding various degrees of interests, while the contractors are going through serious financial challenges due to nonpayment.
“These same contractors are those who have been assisting people, both old and young from the Niger region in the past.
“As the federal government did not consider it fit to give palliatives to the ex-militants in the wake of this global health pandemic, we looked up to the contractors.
“Therefore if the contractors are paid it will go along way to ease the current situation because the contractors would definitely provide palliatives to the people in the communities.
“We are using this medium to appeal to the federal government to urgently do the needful before we lose our patience and take actions that may not go down well with the government of the day.
“As a result of the nonpayment of the Amnesty contractors by the Amnesty office, all ongoing empowerment training programmes in the region were stopped as the contractors were starved of funds to continue with the training programmes in various states in the region”.
Ebi advised the current caretaker committee of theAmnesty office to quickly settle all genuine contractors to allow earlier stalled empowerment training programmes to continue uninterrupted.
He warned that if the situation continued, they would resort to protest despite the lockdown.
He urged the caretaker committee to prioritise payment of the genuine contractors, stressing that youth empowerment strategies must be sustained to make reasonable impact on conflict resolution and management.
“It is a sad commentary that Nigeria is in a state of fiasco, where all means of youth empowerment and development seem to be failing. The foundational problem plaguing the country affects the youth. Things seem to be falling apart. The youth look for a sense of belonging but can find little or none”, he said.
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