ONYEDI GABRIEL, PORT HARCOURT
The Interim Administrator, Presidential Amnesty Programme, Col. Dixion Milland Dikio (retd) has called on ex-agitators to jettison the use of protest as a method of agitation, describing it as retrogressive and old-fashioned.
The amnesty boss said instead of deploying protest, beneficiaries of the programme should adopt dialogue and other means that would not negatively affect the overall development of the region.
Dikio spoke in Port Harcourt on Wednesday at the opening of a three-day workshop on Strategic Communication for the PAP and its delegates, organised in partnership with Facility for Oil Sector Transparency and Reform in Nigeria (FOSTERN).
He regretted that constant blocking of the East-West road, by some aggrieved amnesty beneficiaries, was giving a bad name to the Niger Delta region.
He said instead of blocking crucial economic gateways in the region for a protest that aggrieved ex-agitators should seek other peaceful means including dialogue to resolve their grievances.
Dikio observed that most stakeholders in the region lacked understanding of the PAP, the reason he said, made them abandon major critical issues to pursue crumbs.
He said PAP was a subset of many other major initiatives designed to address the root cause of the arms struggle in the region that led to the amnesty.
He said it stood logic in the head for a population of over 20 million people to anchor their future on a programme developed for only 30,000 ex-agitators.
He said: “We have the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP). We have to make the best of it. But how can we make the best out of it, when we don’t even understand the essence of the presidential amnesty programme?
“The Presidential Amnesty Programme was set up as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) for 30,000 ex-agitators. If you are not among these 30,000 persons and you are in the scheme you are a visitor.
“There is a need for clarity. At the inception of the programme, amnesty was a subset of so many other initiatives to address the reasons the armed struggle took place in the first instance. If we don’t understand it, we will leave those important things and fight over crumbs.
Dikio regretted that many of the beneficiaries were not concerned about the major issues that led to the amnesty but were only interested in unnecessary protests for personal gains.