Amnesty programme has achieved 96% success, says Boroh

The Presidential Amnesty Programme has achieved 96 per cent success, ‎Coordinator, Paul Boroh, has claimed.

Speaking with State House Correspondents in Abuja, yesterday, Boroh, who commended President Muhammadu Buhari for the confidence reposed in him, noted: “What is happening in the Amnesty Programme today is no longer business as usual.

“The programme actually is a security programme that has to do with critical stakeholders who drive the process in the programme. I’m only there to supervise what they are doing, so that we can achieve the aim for which the programme was established, to allow and ensure for peace and stability of the Niger Delta region, it is a security programme,” he said.

On his achievements in office, Boroh said: “Greatly, in the sense that my task is to ensure peace and stability in the Niger Delta region and you are in better position to testify to that.”

Asked when the programme is scheduled to end, he said: “Very soon. Is a process, not a mathematical solution, and we are in the process of achieving sustainable reintegration of the ex-agitators in the programme.”

Regarding the percentage the programme has so far achieved, he explained: “We have attained 96 per cent. We have only few left, from the 30,000, we have a case low balance of about 10,000 left that need to be reintegrated.

“We are looking at Mr. President’s vision of alternative to our oil in reintegrating our youths, that has to do with agriculture and that is the focus for which the programme is on now. We are focusing on agriculture as a way of life for the youth in the Niger Delta region.

“We have gone so far to a point that most of the youths have also bought into the idea and see of agriculture as a way of life, as a way of creating job opportunities, as a way to ensure food security in the region and again to develop their financial positions, because they will sell their farm products.”

On the allegation that some of the ex-militants sent for studies oversea were abandoned, he said: “I will never allow any of my children schooling outside this country under government to suffer. So, as we speak, 96 per cent of those on offshore scholarship have graduated and returned home.

“I have only a few, in fact, not more than 100 of them left in the entire globe where they have been schooling in the US, UK, Asian countries and South Africa. They have graduated and have come home.

“The ones that refused to graduate and are trying to make life unbearable for themselves, it is their own cup of tea; the federal government is not responsible for them anymore.”

Asked how the government is trying to accommodate those that have graduated, he noted: “This is a very great challenge that we are all facing as a nation state. The federal government ensured that about 350 of them have been employed in the various ministries in the country.

“We are only waiting for appropriation, so that once they report to their various ministries, they will start earning their salaries,” he said.