Former Niger Delta agitators have warned firms willing to approach the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) for contracts that it will no longer be business as usual under the leadership of the programme Interim Administrator, Col. Milland Dixon Dikio.

The former agitators explained that Dikio had not awarded new contracts since he came on board because he was interested in sanitising the process to actualise the reintegration phase of the programme.

The National Secretary, First Phase Ex-Agitators, Nature Dumale, spoke in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, yesterday after accompanying Dikio to inspect commercial farms in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, as part of arrangements to roll out trainings for ex-agitators on agriculture.

He said the amnesty boss inherited many ex-agitators, who went through various training programmes without empowerment, noting that Dikio had evolved a new strategy of Train, Employ and Mentor (TEM) to deal with the shortcomings.

Dumale said only contractors whose proposals and facilities were in line with TEM would be considered for fresh jobs in PAP.

He said: “It is no longer business as usual. You will not get any contract from the amnesty office except due diligence are properly carried out to the satisfaction of procurement, legal, project and account departments including the Interim Administrator himself, who is a diligent man.

“The amnesty boss has come up with the vision of TEM. It is a process where any person that comes up to do a contract will know it is not business as usual. You are going to do a presentation showing statistics, evidence and proofs of the fact that you can take delegates to your company, get them trained, employed and mentored so that at the end of the day they can get job somewhere because they have been properly mentored.

“After you have done a presentation, the entire amnesty team will also do a practical inspection of your facility. So the Niger Delta should know there is hope for the region”.

He revealed that Dikio’s main focus was to address the challenges of reintegration, adding that the amnesty boss had already identified food security, waterway security and waterway transportation as areas of interests.

“We are blessed with so much fertile land and that is why he wants to concentrate on agriculture. We can make more than N65, 000 monthly by planting only maize and cassava.

“It is safer and easier to travel by water. So, waterway transportation is very profitable. Look at Port Harcourt to Calabar; it will take you the whole day to travel by road from Uyo to Calabar now. But that same journey by water is less than one hour. The amnesty boss took responsibility to go through the same route by water himself last Saturday to see things himself.

“The Chinese people make billions of dollars annually from fishing in our own coastal lines. Why can’t we go into fishing business? Why can’t we buy trawlers and go into fishing ourselves?

“Even in waterway security, we are the best people to secure our environment because we know our environment. So, these are the visions of the amnesty boss in the reintegration phase”.

Dumale appealed to the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Ministry of Environment to partner with the Amnesty office to tackle the challenges of the region.

The former warlord warned civil servants in the amnesty office frustrating the efforts of Dikio to actualise the mandate of the scheme to steer clear. (THISDAY)

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