Former Special Adviser to the President on the Niger Delta and Chairman Presidential Amnesty Implementation Committee, Chief Kingsley Kuku, PhD, recently paid a courtesy visit to the incumbent Chief Executive Officer, Major-General Barry Tariye Ndiomu (rtd) Interim Administrator, Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP). The duo responded to questions from journalists after the engagement at the PAP office, Abuja. Below are excerpts.

On the expansion of PAP to incorporate more beneficiaries

Ndiomu: First, I want to thank President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for continuing with this critical Programme. What I was saying in effect is that first of all the Amnesty Programme has been largely very successful in helping the restive youths of the Niger Delta build capacity. And considering the fact that we are supposed to be in the Reintegration phase, of course the Programme itself ought to have rounded off long before now. But clearly, most of the objectives for which it was established have not been achieved, and it would be more appropriate which is why we are recommending for some kind of transition to a social investment agency which will impact directly on the lives of the youths across the Niger Delta. Basically, that’s what we are advocating.

Appraising your reforms at PAP

Ndiomu: A lot has been achieved as you know, most of these programmess were started at the time of Chief Kingsley Kuku. The pilot training scheme, the education scholarship programme and all of that were started under him. He midwifed them. It has been largely very successful I must tell you. We’ve produced so many graduates in various fields, we’ve produced pilots, flight engineers, and so on and so forth. What we have come to do is to improve on what he started and ensure that we drive it to the point where we would have for example, the pilots are being type-rated right now in various institutions across the world particularly those in South Africa. They will be graduating in a couple of weeks and as a matter of fact, hopefully we will be inviting Chief Kuku to the graduation on the 5th of January next year for that of the pilots. The engineers also will be graduating very soon and hopefully of course they’ll be gainfully employed as aviation professionals.

The cooperative scheme which I commenced, hopefully in another couple of weeks you’ll probably see a documentary, detailing the success story of the cooperative programme so far. That has enabled most of the youths to grow their businesses and become entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, we do not have sufficient funds and we are also appealing to the Federal Government to key into the scheme, that way, we’ll be able to take as many people off the unemployment market and of course coupled with the other skills that they are acquiring from various vocational trainings which we’re executing especially in the IT sector with NITDA. We believe that all of this will give us significant milestones in terms of dealing with issues of unemployment and youths employability across the Niger Delta. The big picture is to maintain peace and skill up the youths in the region.

Your impressions about what you have seen here today

Kuku: It’s amazing. I came to simply thank the Interim Administrator for revamping the legacy programmes and projects. These are legacy projects we initiated on behalf of our people that were abandoned at certain stages of some administrations in this Programme until General Ndiomu came on board. Like I told him, I would have also come here when Col. Dikio was here because he commenced the process of revamping a lot of those legacy projects so I want to thank Col. Dikio for what he did, while he was here. I am particularly excited to stand by General Ndiomu, stand with him, move with him because he’s been part of this Programme when we were here between 2010 to 2015. Maj. Gen. Ndiomu now retired, was the man who provided security and stability for this Programme as a Commandant with the Nigerian Army.

Today, I know he didn’t know that he was going to be Interim Administrator one day at this same Programme and here he is, implementing and executing those legacy projects that we initiated like the pilots training programme, the maritime sea farers programme, educational scholarship programmes and other major programmes and now he has initiated a cooperative business enterprise scheme for our people.

I want to finally thank our President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for seeing the need to continue with this Programme and possibly expand it to be more impactful and I also want to thank the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, who is a very fair minded and just person. I know that he will give all the support needed. We trust in his capacity to give this Programme the needed impetus to succeed.