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Amnesty Office begins wind down with exit of 3,232 beneficiaries

By Abosede Musari, Abuja
10 February 2016   |   11:30 pm
The Presidential Amnesty Office has begun the winding down of the amnesty programme. To this effect, it has already exited 3,232 beneficiaries from the Programme. The beneficiaries are said to have been trained as entrepreneurs and have received business and set up/starter packs. Media and Communication consultant to the Amnesty Office, Owei Lakemfa said in…

Amnesty

The Presidential Amnesty Office has begun the winding down of the amnesty programme.

To this effect, it has already exited 3,232 beneficiaries from the Programme. The beneficiaries are said to have been trained as entrepreneurs and have received business and set up/starter packs.

Media and Communication consultant to the Amnesty Office, Owei Lakemfa said in a statement that all beneficiaries of the Oil & Gas International Foundation (OGIF) programme and the four hundred for whom the Office has secured employment are also among those to be exited from the amnesty programme.

According to him, the 3,232 beneficiaries who are being exited will save the federal government the sum of N2.5 billion in stipends payment in 2016. A second batch of 1,042 will soon be exited from the programme; and are “currently being given starter packs to establish their individual businesses”, Lakemfa said, adding that this will further lead to a reduction of N812 million in stipends payment this year.

“Depending on the budgetary allocation and release, the Amnesty Office plans to exit an additional 2,958 beneficiaries by the end of this year which would amount to a N2.3 billion savings that would otherwise have been spent on stipend payments.
This exercise is a significant step in the five-year Amnesty Programme which had never exited any of the 30,000 beneficiaries. It is also part of the exit strategies of the Presidential Amnesty Programme”, Lakemfa said.

Lakemfa also revealed that more of the beneficiaries are currently being trained locally. “So far, the Amnesty Programme has trained 17,322 of the beneficiaries leaving a balance of 12,678.

Additionally, it has embarked on the domestication of all its programmes. Currently, five of its 49 training centres are offshore while it has students in 131 tertiary institutions abroad. With effect from the 2015/16 Session, 95 percent of the student deployment was for local institutions”, he said.

Also, the Amnesty programme has in the past five years, secured admission and given scholarship to 5,234 beneficiaries in tertiary institutions. Of this number, 3,082 gained admission in the country, 2,150 abroad, while 272 have graduated.

He also stated that the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Brig Gen Paul Boroh (Rtd) has set up a Taskforce to work out and implement the Exit Strategy of the Amnesty Programme with timelines that will not compromise National Security.

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