Abuja—The Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) has denied allegations that its current Interim Administrator, Col. Milland Dixon Dikio, spent N187million on the supply of stationeries and consultancy in a period of one year.
The PAP insisted that people suggesting that the transactions were done within Dikio’s reign were only out to mislead the public and discredit the interim administrator.
The Special Adviser to Dikio on Media, Mr. Neotabase Egbe, said in a statement that the incident occurred in 2017, and the circular for the query succinctly captured the date and other details.
He said if the reporters were not acting the scripts of their paymasters they would have launched an investigation to fulfill the time-tested and age-long journalistic ethics of factual reporting.
Egbe noted that the notice of the query which had 2017 payment voucher would have ordinarily made them avoid the gross misrepresentation of the issue.
He said the amnesty office at no time received a series of invitations from the senate as claimed by the reports.
He also stressed that Dikio has high regard for institutions of government saddled with the responsibility of carrying out its statutory function.
Egbe said: “The report widely circulated in some national dailies does not represent the true situation of things. The said incident for the supply of stationery and consultancy services for end of the year happened way back in 2017.
“It was therefore surprising that for obvious monetary gains, mischief and deliberate action to discredit the Interim Administrator, the authors of the story couldn’t verify from the office.
“Even the nomenclature of the office from the circular shows that the occupant of the office was still referred to as Special Adviser, whereas since the coming of Dikio, it has been rightly changed as Administrator”, he said.
Egbe called on journalists to always cross-check with the amnesty office to avoid such embarrassing reports, maintaining that Dikio’s mantra of probity and accountability remain unchanged.
