Major General Barry Ndiomu (retired), the interim administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, has claimed that no fewer than 3000 former Niger Delta agitators are receiving scholarships at higher institutions both domestically and overseas.
He continued by saying that all of their fees and allowances for the 2022–2023 academic year had also been covered.
In a statement released on Monday, Freston Akpor, Special Adviser on Media to the PAP Administrator, refuted claims that the program had not yet sent out scholarship recipients.
He said he had sanitized the program despite inheriting a number of liabilities, including unpaid scholarship payments, unfinished vocational training centers, non-formal education programs, and a substantial financial load.
The statement read in part, “Despite episodes of misinformation in the media, we have sanitized the Programme. For instance, instead of canceling the inconclusive scholarship awarded by his predecessor and initiating a fresh one, as most people would have done, General Ndiomu rather sanitized and adopted the process with the payment of all fees for 1700 PAP students spread across tertiary institutions of learning across the country and an additional 55 delegates going into their first year at various universities in different countries.
“This is in addition to 1300 students already deployed to various tertiary institutions within Nigeria and overseas in the previous year, bringing the total number of students to 3000 whose scholarships covering tuition and In-Training-Allowance have been paid in full by the administration of General Ndiomu for the 2022/2023 academic session. Insinuations that the current dispensation has yet to deploy delegates under the scholarship programme are ungodly.”
He cautioned those responsible for the act, while pleading with the people to disregard the allegations of troublemakers.