Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) to Sensitize Ex-Agitators on N1.5b Cooperative Scheme

The management of the Presidential Amnesty Programme Cooperative Society Limited has said that it will carry out an awareness campaign to sensitize ex-agitators on the modalities and benefits of the initiative.

The cooperative, designed to bring about a more sustainable empowerment and reintegration scheme for the 30,000 ex-agitators in the Niger Delta, was launched in Abuja last month with N1.5bn seed capital for take-off by the Interim Administrator of the PAP, Maj. Gen. Barry Ndiomu (retd.).

Speaking on the sensitization, the Financial Secretary of PAPCOSCOL, Tonye Bobo, told journalists in Yenagoa that the exercise would start from Bayelsa State and spread to other states of the region before the cooperative would commence operations.

Bobo, who is also the chairman of PAP Third Phase delegates, said it was important for the beneficiaries to be abreast of the concept and details of the cooperative, describing it as ‘life-changing’.

Bobo, a member of the Strategic Communication Committee for the PAP, said, “This cooperative is what people are eager to know if it is real. It has been launched as a life-changing program, and it will not be business as usual where people will be trained, given start-up packs, and sold or misused them.

“We are having N1.5bn (capital) in our account to be managed by the ex-agitators; N500 million will be put into the cooperative account monthly for us to manage. We will be kick-starting the sensitization, we will talk to our people (ex-agitators) from the various states starting from Bayelsa State, before we go into the cooperative business.”

He appealed to President Bola Tinubu to sustain the amnesty program and ignore calls for its scrapping, stressing that the scheme was vital to the peace and development of the Niger Delta in particular and Nigeria in general.