The Niger Delta Unification and Advancement Movement (NDUAM) hereby congratulates Maj. Gen. Barry Tariye Ndiomu on his appointment as Interim Administrator, Presidential Amnesty Program (PAP).Ndiomu is a thoroughbred Niger Deltan with vast knowledge and wealth of experience who is fit enough for his new position and his appointment remains cheerful to us.

Being advocates of a better Niger Delta, NDUAM believes Ndiomu will live up to the expectations of his exalted office by prioritizing the welfare and advancement of PAP’s stakeholders and candidates including those from impacted communities.

Niger Delta needs all the developmental incentives it can get, hence ten PAP-like programs won’t be too much for a region that feeds the most populous black nation in the world from oil and gas proceeds.

Gladly, Ndiomu is coming at a time his predecessor, Colonel Milland Dikio (rtd) had sanitized the system. Niger Deltans are aware of how the Col. Dikio’s tenure ended the admission racketeering in schools and the delayed payment of amnesty beneficiaries and scholarship students.

While we will not question President Buhari for replacing a performing Dikio, we expect Ndiomu to continue from where his predecessor stopped and outperform him.

It would be recalled that before Dikio came on board, scholarship opportunities were given to people who weren’t ready for school. A popular private university based in Delta State and few others were found culpable in this admission racketeering.

The Dikio administration introduced better schools such as Nile, Baze, Afe Babalola universities and also made room for public tertiary institutions like Uniport, Unilag and what have you.

For the first time, the PAP ensured that beneficiaries had the required O’level certificates and were made to write JAMB’s UTME. An online portal for admissions was also created and made public for Niger Deltans to avoid the fraudulent syndicates posing to be PAP.

We equally have it on good authority that nominations were taken from ex-agitators and few people from the impacted communities were also considered.

Dikio-led PAP worked in conjunction with the schools to further screen nominees before their acceptance. In few instances, after screening from the respective universities, some were screened out based on educational qualifications, age and attitudinal problems.

The fraud ended and the masterminds who got offended fought back especially those who were trading scholarship chances for outrageous amounts.

Ndiomu has been given a golden chance by the President to improve upon what Dikio did. We expect the Ndiomu-led PAP to send Niger Delta students to the best universities in Nigeria and abroad like Harvard and Yale.

We do not want to believe the vexatious rumour that he was appointed to end the amnesty program. Indeed PAP will end one day, but we don’t think we have achieved so much to consider such, considering the sorry state of the region.

One of the critical components of reintegration PAP owes our people is sending them to school. Other parts of the country are using PTDF to do so.

For instance, the Ministry of Niger Delta and the Niger Delta Development Commission have been in comatose in the immediate past years and it is safe to say only PAP under Dikio sent our people for further education. It would therefore be wicked for anybody to end the program in 2023.

NDUAM calls on Ndiomu to continue the prompt payment of stipends and in-training allowances and take PAP to greater heights in order to write his name in the annals of history.

We equally join other well-meaning sons and daughters of the Niger Delta to call on Mr. President to urgently constitute a substantive board of the NDDC since the forensic audit has been long concluded and submitted.

Comr. Selekumo Timothy

Head, Media/Publicity