By  FELIX OKOTIE 

The relevance of teaching history is underscored by the discipline’s capacity to aid people in understanding the world around them amidst the changes affecting almost everything. Learning history also provides a context within which people could appreciate current events and how they also fit into the grand scheme of things.

Oftentimes people hardly come to terms with the realisation that life itself is dynamic and change is inevitable. They therefore become captives of the past, a situation which restrains their growth and if they are unable to adapt to the realities, there is the tendency of them employing violence to resist the innovations and the new initiatives.

This is the scenario playing out in the Presidential Amnesty Programme, PAP, where comparatively the past may not have been too pleasant, triggering the change that saw Major General Barry Ndiomu as the Interim Administrator on September 19, 2022. General Ndiomu came with the mandate to wind down the Programme but following wide consultations with relevant stakeholders from within and outside the region, he was able to convince policy drivers to make a U-turn owing to the attendant security and economic backlash. There was also a caveat. This was for him to sanitise the PAP and clean up the Augean stable.

Those who have known the General long before now will tell you he is not just another soldier. Ndiomu comes across as an officer with a high academic standards, proven integrity and an unquestionable pedigree with a name to defend and above all he is a team player. These were the credentials he brought to P AP and so far he has proven his worth.

Against this backdrop and in the face of the false narratives on media and speech platforms, PAP  issued rebuttals to correct what it described as “some disconcerting and unending contents of misinformation in the media space with an obvious intent to whip up negative public opinion against the leadership of the Programme”. The statement also noted that “the PAP which has been watching with strong indignation the unsubstantiated statements attributed to some mischief makers hiding under pseudonyms, would have ordinarily not join issues with faceless persons as such an exercise would only elevate the enterprise of those bad hats”.

Having seen and read some of the statements issued by critics of the General, one can only argue that the rebuttal by the PAP was not only timely but also pertinent to prevent stakeholders and the public from being exposed to as well as consume the toxic narrative in the media space.

It is imperative to note that on assumption, Ndiomu inherited several liabilities ranging from unpaid scholarship awards, uncompleted vocational training centres, non-formal education programmes and a huge financial burden to contend with, among other challenges.For instance, instead of cancelling the inconclusive scholarship awarded by his predecessor and initiating a fresh one as most persons would have done, General Ndiomu rather sanitised and adopted the process with payment of all fees of 1,700 PAP students spread across tertiary institutions of learning across the country and an additional 55 delegates as freshmen in various universities in different countries. These figures are in addition to 1,300 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, ITA, have been paid in full by the administration of General Ndiomu for the 2022/2023 academic session.

In the light of these hard facts some stakeholders have labelled those petitions and criticisms as mischievous, uncharitable and ungodly, particularly when they insinuate that the PAP under the current dispensation is yet to deploy delegates under the scholarship programme. It is also regrettable that while PAP had in the recent past announced payment of all outstanding scholarship debts to  the tune of N7 billion for the 2022/2023 academic session, those destabilising agents are using aspects of the media to give a negative spin to the success story of the Interim Administrator. The Formal Education Trust Fund is also in the works and when operational, will be an added boost to the formal education scheme of the PAP.

Vocational training which is central to the reintegration phase of the Programme to provide relevant skills for ex-agitators is on course. However, the vocational training centres designed to provide skills for the teeming youths in the region when functional, were also inherited, five of them sited in Bayelsa, Rivers, Delta, Edo and Ondo states; but unfortunately, no vendor or contractor of any of the centres got payment before September 19, 2022. It is on record that all the vendors who were owed prior to when the current management assumed office have been paid. Relevant higher institutions of learning, training institutes and development partners have undertaken spot assessments to re-evaluate existing infrastructure, update software and service equipment, including those left at Boro Town after it was burgled to bring the centres, including an additional one to be sited in Bayelsa, up to speed and take-off.

The management under General Ndiomu also cleared debts related to ongoing training schemes to the tune of N4.5 billion as at March 2023. A total of 847 delegates are currently undergoing training in the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA,  in various ICT specialised fields with certification in digital marketing, e-mail marketing, social media marketing, computer appreciation, search engine optimisation as well as technical and computer writing. Similarly, the PAP is sponsoring 75 pilots and aircraft engineers to South Africa and France for type-rating as part of the Programme’s aviation training scheme which General Ndiomu is very passionate about. A breakdown of the figure indicates that 35 delegates are pilots, while 40 are billed for aircraft engineering.

All inherited debts have also been paid off through the deployment of a strategic bouquet of financial models. Some of those debts were owed to some critical contractors and agencies. Others are capital and recurrent obligations.

General Ndiomu came with innovative ideas and on assumption, initiated new programmes to enhance the socio-economic sustainability of ex-agitators and young people in the Niger Delta. A major boost to that initiative was the launching of the PAP Cooperative Scheme with an initial sum of N1.5 billion as seed money in the account with an additional N100 million operational fund to be solely managed by the ex-agitators. The cooperative scheme has an eminent jurist, Justice Francis Tabai, a retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria as chair of the board with a team of experienced consultants drawn from the region to assist in nurturing the cooperative into fruition. The cooperative with the acronym PAPCOSOL, will create a conducive environment for small businesses to grow to become the catalyst for economic development in the Niger Delta.

Unending agitations, disparaging statements and heightened attacks on the Interim Administrator and his team arose from the inherited payment list fraught with irregularities such as multiple entries of the same accounts. 

Okotie, a public affairs commentator, wrote from Warri, Delta State