Minister for State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu is advocating
for the scrapping of the Amnesty Program in the Niger Delta, saying the
Government can no longer sustain payments to Ex-militants under the
current economic situation.
The Minister said about $40billion has been spent in the Niger Delta
region in the last ten years with nothing on ground to justify the huge
expense.
Mr. Charles Achodo, Special Adviser on Niger Delta Affairs to the
Minister, made this known at the 7th Sustainability in the Extractive
(SITEI) conference organised by CSR-In-Action in Abuja on Monday.
He said: “The amnesty is very clear, and it cannot be a solution to the
state of insecurity in the Niger Delta. Rather, you use the amnesty to
create an asymmetrical environment. A fragile environment does not like
asymmetry; it likes more of a symmetrical response.
“A situation where you are paying people N65,000 every month to keep
quiet; that does not solve the problem. If you multiply N65,000 by the
number of militants and by the number of years the programme has been
running, you are looking at close to N50 billion. That is a huge amount of
money. It is not sustainable and it is not guaranteeing you what you
expect in the place.”
Achodo also said the $40 billion invested in 11,000 projects in the Niger
Delta region over the last 10 years has been a waste. He pointed out that
the money was spent without concrete evidence.
“The Niger Delta has become a cacophony of voices, but without a purpose,”
he said.
“It has also become a region with a cacophony of all kinds of projects. If
you look closely from the past 10 years, up to $40 billion has been made
available for that region and you can never tour the Niger Delta and see a
N1 billion or a N500 million investment, but I am telling you,
collectively, for the past 10 years, that was what has gone into that
region.
“That amount was basically what was invested through NDDC and the Ministry
of Niger Delta. If you check them, for instance, the NDDC has close to
11,000 contracts. With these contracts, mostly owned and held by people
from the region, then you can understand that we are the ones doing
ourselves in, for not implementing those projects. Eleven thousand
contracts and if you distribute them all along, you are looking at close
to $40 billion in terms of investment. Go to the Ministry of Niger Delta,
it is the same thing.
“When you look at the Niger Delta Development Compact, which we have,
which covered the short term, medium term, from now till 2021, you are
looking at a total investment of N1.7 trillion that is earmarked for the
region and that covered what the oil companies are putting into the
region, what government agencies are putting into the region and all kinds
of investments that are required in that region.”