The Nigerian Navy and the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), on Friday, said the only way to permanently resolve issues in the Niger Delta region of the country is to equip ex-agitators with skills acquisition.
The two establishments being led by Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo, and Interim Administrator, Maj.-Gen. Barry Ndiomu (rtrd) made this submission at a meeting in Abuja.
They explained that training of the former militants in various skills would also reduce rate of oil theft in the region.
Ndiomu was represented at the meeting by PAP Head of Reintegration, Wilfred Musa, while the Chief of Naval Engineering, Rear Admiral Sdel Ladan, led the Nigerian Navy visiting delegation on behalf of Gambo.
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Speaking at the meeting, Musa sought collaboration of the Nigerian Navy in order to use the facility of the Naval Engineering College for training of former agitators in garment-making, adding that PAP is readiness to explore a beneficial working relationship as well as continued partnership.
“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.
“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 specialize and they will have a good appreciation of the value chain.
“An end-to-end of it is that you can decide to major as monograming expert or as the one who is branding while another man is making the garment. Also, we observed that it was one man to one machine. So, there is no excuse of saying you don’t have a machine,” he said.
In his remark, Ladan said the visit was a reciprocal one made to consolidate and deepen the growing partnership with the Naval Engineering College. He thanked Ndiomu for his good leadership of PAP.
Daily Trust recalls that PAP leadership had earlier visited to inspect the school facility with the aim of training delegates there.
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