Former Niger Delta militants and beneficiaries of the Presidential Amnesty Programme have called on the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to probe the N541bn spent on the scheme in the past eight years.
The former agitators said despite the huge funds poured into the programme from the beginning, it had failed to fulfill its promises to beneficiaries.
The ex-militants, under the auspices of Transparency and Accountability Movement in Niger Delta (TAMND) gave the call, in a statement signed by its Chairman, Lord Onipa and Secretary, Nengi Buna.
According to the militants, the Amnesty programme had failed to keep its promises of providing accommodation, vehicles and other provisions initially made for ex-militants after eight years.
The statement read in part “We also frowned at the situation whereby stipends/allowances to delegates in schools and other training programme are owed in arrears from five to six months. These are the issues bothering us as a group in the region.
“The amnesty programme has failed to fulfil appreciable percentage of the agreed conditions to ex-agitators. We wish to put it on record that, the Federal Government has so far, spent over N541 billion on the amnesty programme for the past eight years.
“We began to wonder whether the amnesty programme is properly co-ordinate or it is designed to benefit some Federal Government agencies or Nigerian security agencies and those at the helms of affairs of the programme.
“We are demanding that the Amnesty Office should bring out all the names of delegates and when and where they were trained? It is also our firm conviction that the sum of N541 billion spent on the programme is a fraud, and call on the Federal Government to set up an investigative panel to unravel the secrets behind this colossal waste of money without any meaningful achievement.
“We also demand that, let the Federal Government publish each camp list of delegates who embraced the amnesty that bring the total number to 30,000 as been claimed by the Amnesty Office”.
