Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege has urged the Federal Government to shelve alleged plans to scrap the Presidential Amnesty Programme for ex-agitators in the Niger Delta region.
Speaking in Abuja while hosting a socio-political organization, New Era Forum, Omo-Agege said scrapping the Amnesty Programme was premature and ill-timed, and would truncate the fragile peace in the region.
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He said leaders in the Niger Delta had failed their people for mismanaging funds meant for the development of the region.
He said all the resources the region was entitled to had been released, but the leaders had failed to hold to account, those to whom these resources had been entrusted.
Omo-Agege also urged the Niger Deltans to come up with a new narrative about holding leaders in the region to account.
He said: “I’ve been privy to all of the budgetary estimates that were passed both in the Eighth Assembly and in the Ninth Assembly. And all that we are entitled to as a region has been given to us. But we have failed Mr President because we have not been able to hold to account those to whom these resources have been entrusted.
“You don’t expect Mr President moving from community to community to ensure that the fundings made available to us have been judiciously utilised.
“It is left for us to ask questions that the fundings that have been released to us, how have these been utilised?
“So Mr President has done his part, we are the ones that have failed our people”, he stated.
Earlier, the leader of the group, Sunday Onyewonsa, called for a security summit that would fashion out solutions to challenges facing the region, even as he stressed the need to declare a state of emergency on Niger Delta roads.
