BEVERLY HILLS, April 06, (THEWILL) – The Senate on Thursday reacted to the five-month arrears owed the 30,000 beneficiaries of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, PAP, by requesting the Finance minister, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, to release the outstanding N15bn in the 2016 budgetary allocation to PAP.
The upper chamber asked its Committee on Niger Delta to, in two weeks, investigate circumstances causing funding constraints of the programme, with a view to avoiding recurrence. The committee was also tasked to probe how names of certain persons who are not indigenes of Abia and Akwa Ibom states surfaced as beneficiaries of the amnesty programme.
Under the programme, each beneficiary is meant to receive a monthly stipend of N65,000.
In a motion unanimously adopted by the lawmakers through a voice vote, Senator Peter Nwaoboshi (PDP-Delta North) expressed concern over the challenges facing the programme due to paucity of funds.
He said that the challenges resulted from delayed and staggered release of funds from the 2016 Appropriation Act to the programme.
The sponsor of the motion warned that the situation is already threatening the well-conceived programme of the Federal Government as the Amnesty Office was finding it difficult to meet its obligations to its workers and the beneficiaries of the programme.
He stated that N20bn was appropriated in the 2016 appropriation act for the programme while the Senate further voted N35bn to the programme in the supplementary budget.
Nwaoboshi, however, lamented that only N40bn of the total N55bn appropriated to the programme was released, stating that the situation was becoming serious and capable of truncating the lofty programme with tension and threats of violence already palpable in the Niger Delta.
The senator, who noted that the programme was conceived to stem the tide of disaffection, agitation and militancy in the Niger Delta, expressed worries that funds appropriated for the programme had depreciated steadily, leading to adverse impact on its operation.
