ABUJA: The Presidential Amnesty Programme has denied what it termed false claim making rounds that it sent 43 ex-agitators  to the United States in 2015, through  a vendor, Kaplan International Colleges (KICL) and abandoned them without paying their tuition or  allowances.

It will be recalled that the Presidential Amnesty Office recently came under heavy criticism on why 43 of its students were abandoned in a US university.

In a statement signed by the Media & Communication Consultant, Presidential Amnesty Office, Owei Lakemfa, the Office blamed the problem being faced by the students in America on the vendor company (Kaplan), which it said ignored the directive by the office not to fly them abroad and went ahead to fly the 43 students out of the country.

The company, according to Lakemfa  also ignored the same directive earlier issued by the then out-going  Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta, Kingsley Kuku, who consequently directed Kaplan International not to deploy the 43 students abroad  in view  of the dearth of funds and resources in the Amnesty Office.

He also noted that the company on 9 June, 2015, equally ignored the management of the Amnesty Office, which met under the interim chairmanship of Mr. D.P. Tikolo, who also reaffirmed the  decision not to send the 43 students abroad.

To justify its decision, Lakemfa  said that the Amnesty Office, apart from the fact that Kaplan took the students to US without authorization, its fees are unrealistic, unaffordable and un-payable.

‘‘Kaplan is charging for the one year pre-degree programme it carried out, an average N10,262,745.00 per student which comes to a total N496,200,000. This includes its charge of S17,000 per student for a ten-week Bridge Programme in the  US.

‘‘Its fees for the students in the American universities which come to an average of  $75,000 each, is more than twice what the Amnesty Office pays for students in the same universities undergoing  similar  courses. Even the fees of IVY League Schools in US are far cheaper; for instance its leading light, Harvard University charges $43,983,’’ he pointed out.

As a way out of the woods, Lakemfa however, informed that the Amnesty Office had already sent a proposal to Kaplan International demanding for a 50 percent reduction in payments and fees, and relocating the students and their transcripts to local  Nigerian universities on Amnesty Scholarship, while parents who insist their children remain in the US, can take over the payment of such fees.