National Committee of Yoruba Youths (NCYY) beg Buhari not to scrap amnesty programme

by Ranti Joseph

Everyone seems not to support the President-elect Muhammadu Buhari on the ground of scraping the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP). Several ex-militant has urged Buhari to reconsider that decision and now the National Committee of Yoruba Youths (NCYY) has risen in unison against the call to scrap the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP).

The group, which converged in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital at a news conference addressed by their leaders; the president of the group, Oladimeji Odeyemi and secretary Oyewole Olurin, ‎described the call for the scrapping of amnesty programme where about 20,000 of them had benefitted in form of local and foreign educational trainings as unguarded, diversionary and ill-advised.

They opined that the amnesty programme has proven to be a security stabilising programme for the hitherto restive youths of the Niger Delta region.

“We can without any equivocation bear testimony to the fact that the outgoing PAP chairman and Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs, Kingsley Kuku has always supported any cause that will uplift the name and image of Nigeria as well as whatever will accelerate the pace of socio-economic transformation of the country.

“If anything, these among others are the qualities that mark Kuku out as a man of high repute, unquestionable integrity and worthy of emulation. We once again restate our call on the incoming administration to sustain the tempo of the PAP and continue with its funding. Kuku and his team have turned the amnesty programme into a model to evaluate performance and service delivery,’’ they added.

They explained that the amnesty programme have succeeded in training both locally and offshore about 20,000 youths out of the 30,000 beneficiaries enlisted in the scheme, a feat that has produced trained manpower to provide services in the oil and gas, power, maritime, agro-allied and the aviation industries in Nigeria.

Apart from youth empowerment, NCYY also recalled that prior to the coming on board of the amnesty programme, the nation has also benefitted from the programme in the area of crude oil production. It said crude oil production per day was considerably low before because of the restiveness in the Niger Delta but today, with the successful implementation of the programme, our crude oil production hovers between 2.2million barrels and 2.4million barrels per day.

The youths thereby urged Buhari to be weary of people like a certain Ariyi Emami, who was out to play a script by calling for the scrapping of the programme not minding the fact that 100 of the 500 Itsekiri youths who are beneficiaries of the programme and coincidentally are at the same time his kinsmen, are studying in various institutions abroad courtesy of the amnesty programme.

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