Abuja—The Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) has said that its
Interim Administrator, Major General Barry Ndiomu (rtd), has sanitized the Programme, despite episodes of misinformation and negativity allegedly being sponsored in the media.
The Amnesty Office therefore urged members of the public to ignore the claims of “mischief makers” whose intention is to defame and distract Ndiomu.
This was contained in a statement issued on Monday in Abuja by Ndiomu’s Special Assistant on Media, Freston Akpor.
The media aide affirmed that Ndiomu who assumed office on September 19 last year, “inherited several liabilities ranging from unpaid scholarship awards, uncompleted vocational training centers, non-formal education programmes, and a huge financial burden to contend with among other challenges” yet has sanitized the operations of the programme.
Akpor cautioned those he described as “faceless” individuals spreading misinformation across the media space with “an obvious intent to whip up negative public opinion against the leadership of the Programme” to refrain from such.
He added that the media in Nigeria has evolved, and are considered critical tools to announce the efforts of the PAP in changing the socio-economic narrative of the Niger Delta region.
He further explained that since Ndiomu came on board, he has strategically cleared all inherited debts through tactical financial models, some of the debts which included those that were owed to critical contractors and agencies, as well as scholarship debts.
“The PAP which has been watching with strong indignation the unsubstantiated statements attributed to some mischief makers hiding under pseudonyms, would have ordinarily not joined issues with faceless persons as such an exercise would only elevate the enterprise of those bad hats.
“However, the PAP needs to put the records straight to prevent stakeholders and the public from being exposed to consuming the toxic narrative in the media space,” he said.
On strategic steps taken by General Ndiomu to reform the PAP, he said: “For instance, instead of canceling the inconclusive scholarship awarded by his predecessor and initiating a fresh one as most persons would have done, General Ndiomu rather sanitized and adopted the process with payment of all fees of 1,700 PAP students across tertiary institutions of learning over the country and an additional 55 delegates going into their first year in various universities in different countries.
“This is in addition to 1, 300 students already deployed to various tertiary institutions within Nigeria and overseas in the previous year bringing the total number of students to three thousand (3000) whose scholarships covering tuition and In-Training-Allowance (ITA) have been paid in full by the administration of General Ndiomu for the 2022/2023 academic session”.
Akpor equally declared as “mischievous, uncharitable and ungodly”, insinuations that the current dispensation is yet to deploy delegates under the scholarship programme.
He also reiterated that efforts are in place by the PAP to launch the Formal Education Trust Fund to boost the formal education scheme of the PAP.
