By Tare Youdeowei

The Presidential Amnesty Office has said that it has no mandate to admit additional beneficiaries into the Presidential Amnesty Programme designed for ex-militants in the Niger Delta.

It said that it has to cater for the 30,000 amnesty beneficiaries documented during the disarmament exercise, and has no power to bring in new ones.

The Office pointed out that only the Presidency has the prerogative to grant amnesty or make any addition.

In a statement by the office of its Media and Communication consultant, it said that its attention had been drawn to some youths protesting in Calabar, Cross River State, claiming to have been excluded from the Presidential Amnesty Programme, adding that a similar demand had been made by some other youths in recent times.

It said: “It has also come to our notice that some of the protesting youths are displaying identity cards from the Obubra Orientation Camp as proof that they are part of the Amnesty Programme. This matter of Obubra Camp identity was laid to rest by the previous administration, which after detecting non-qualified people infiltrating the Camp, replaced the Obubra documentation with that done at the point of disarmament based on the various camps the beneficiaries came from.”