One issue that attracted significant interest in the course of the winding down process of the current administration of President Muhamadu Buhari was the scare that the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), was to be wound down with Buhari’s exit from office come May 29, 2023. Fortunately, such a scare was artfully and promptly resolved by the sterling enterprise of the programme’s current Interim Administrator – Major General Barry Ndiomu (retd), who saved the day by countering the rather disturbing misinformation, and assured of the willingness of the administration to sustain PAP for handover to a succeeding government. The import of Ndiomu’s advocacy is accentuated by its utility in containing the massive disruption of the prevailing peace in the region, courtesy of the sustenance of PAP.
PAP was established by the Umaru Yar Adua administration in 2009, at the height of agitation by armed Niger Delta youth groups, who were agitating for more equitable conditions of living in the region. Their agitation was justified by the perennial neglect by the Nigerian state of their region in national development considerations. Given the contingent circumstances at that time, the government was more focused on stopping the violence at all costs firstly, and resolving the causative factors later. Hence it conceded exclusive advantages to the complement of actual agitators who laid down their arms for the receipt of monthly stipends and training opportunities. This scenario created a pool of 30,000 ex-agitators who would be paid a monthly stipend of N65,000.00.
However, after lasting for over a decade the programme has become overdue for restructuring. Yet, in what form and structure it will be delivered to the incoming administration has remained a matter of interest to several observers within and outside the government as well as the Niger Delta region which is its primary area of focus.
Over time, the programme has manifested issues that dictate its review. First is the issue of demographic incongruities in the schedule of beneficiaries of its largesse. Several reviews of the beneficiaries list have manifested significant contradictions of the demographic circumstances in it. For instance, it is unnatural that a human collective can remain with unchanging demographic features for over a decade. Yet PAP has continued payment of the same stipends for the same beneficiaries from 2009 to date. Needless to note that the continued payment of the same stipends to the original beneficiaries without fail since 2009, constitutes an administrative aberration that is difficult to justify.
Secondly is the challenge of misplaced exclusivity of the beneficiaries. Feelers from the zone are stringent that the 30,000 ex-agitators could not have been the only actors in the series of agitations that led to the PAP dispensation. It is strongly argued that there are ex-agitators who were not captured in the initial list. Added to this contention is also the claim that much of the 30,000 beneficiaries of PAP largesse were illegally smuggled into the benefit net by unscrupulous officials of the scheme.
However the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was the revelation by a recent audit exercise under Ndiomu, that out of the thousands of ex-agitators who were purportedly trained by the programme, only a negligible per cent have been gainfully engaged in either paid employment or self employment. Beyond any other consideration, this dismal state of affairs with the engagement of trained ex-agitators, constitutes the ultimate justification to subject the entire programme to a drastic review of its workings. The situation dictates that it can no more be business as usual with PAP, as the reintegration of the ex-agitators has been the primary objective of the scheme at this stage. So if the products of its training scheme are not employable, why still keep the programmer in it present state, it is queried.
This is where the challenge of a paucity of diminished entrepreneurial disposition and skills in the training ad mentoring component of their training stands out in graphic relief. It is a case of dependence on government handouts, taken too far. What needs to done is a dispensation that promotes self sufficiency and demands the buy in of all stake holders in the region as well as the incoming administration.
In a typical situation as this, the way forward is the conversion of PAP into a Social Investment Programme (SIP). In fct, given its antecedents, if PAP converts to an SIP, it will not only be in good company – but may even be disposed to offer superior dividends as it presently does.
As an SIP PAP will join the existing complement of six such programmes but with a difference being that it will still retain its exclusive focus on the Niger Delta region with respect to recruitment of beneficiaries and delivery of welfare packages. This is what is needed to deliver it in the new dispensation, if its mission to fight poverty on a wider scale is to be achieved.
However, the prospects of turning PAP into an SIP or any new package which entails tampering with its structure, is one that has to deploy the most tactful processes given the complement of security related issues such will introduce. Essentially, given the backdrop of mistrust harboured against the federal government by the rank and file of the millions of youth in the Niger Delta, the restructuring of the PAP to another form —even it will offer a higher level of utility requires time and strategies for confidence building in the zone. Yet it is a task that not only needs to be done, but sooner than latter.
