Abuja-The interim administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Col. Milland Dikio (retd), has praised former Niger Delta agitator, Ebikabowei Victor-Ben, popularly known as Boyloaf, for graduating with a first class honours degree in International Relations and Diplomacy, punch newspaper reports.
Boyloaf, a former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), graduated last week from Baze University in Abuja, during the institution’s 7th and 8th combined convocation.
Dikio, in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr Nneotaobase Egbe, stated that the feat symbolizes the purpose of PAP, adding that it represented the emerging new Niger Delta.
He averred that deploying intellect instead of violence and crime is the only way forward for the people of Niger Delta.
The amnesty boss recalled similar achievements by other ex-agitators like Nicholas Goodnews, who graduated with a first class in Mass Communication at the University of Bedfordshire, United Kingdom, earlier in the year, describing them as the new faces of the region.
“We have often said that protest and other forms of civil disturbances, crime and criminality is not the way out.
“The struggle for a better Niger Delta can be achieved if we deploy our intellectual resources and abilities by building individual and collective capacity.
“It gladdens our heart that the likes of Ebikabowei Victor-Ben (Boyloaf) is leading this new direction in academics with his other compatriots like Senior High Chief Bibopere Ajube (shoot-at-sight), doing so in entrepreneurship and manpower development.
“All of these will bring sustained peace and development. Therefore, we urge other ex-agitators and youths in the region to also rise up to the occasion and become the change agents that will be used to market the new Niger Delta,” the statement read.
