Ex-agitators sue FG over stoppage of entitlements

Ex-agitators from the Niger Delta have sued the Federal Government for allegedly withholding their allowances since 2015.

The ex-agitators, in the suit filed at a Federal High Court in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, said it was unjust for government to exclude them from the list of beneficiaries in the past four years for inexplicable reasons.

They told the court that they had been beneficiaries of government’s Amnesty programme since 2009 when it was initiated by the late President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration and wondered why their names were suddenly expunged.

To this end, they urged the court to issue an order that would compel the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami; Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Prof. Charles Dokubo; and Heritage Bank to re-enrol them into the programme and pay them the backlog of their entitlements from 2015.

Shortly after the presiding judge, Justice Isaq Sani had adjourned the matter till November 28, 2019, for hearing, counsel to the ex-agitators, Mr. Asobiyata Ojenamah, told journalists outside the courtroom that his clients’ resort to legal action was due to the failure of several attempts to resolve the issue.

He explained that his clients had sufficient evidence to show that they had been on the Amnesty payroll from 2009 to 2015 before they were suddenly delisted.

“We brought the matter before the court because our clients had been denied their entitlements as beneficiaries of the Amnesty programme since 2015. They were enrolled in the programme in 2009, after successfully concluding their rehabilitation process. But in 2015, their names were removed in a most bizarre fashion,” he said.

Sani stated that several letters had been written to the amnesty office to expeditiously resolve the infraction but to no avail.

Having waited patiently for four years, the ex-agitators felt it was high time they approached the court to enforce their rights, he added.