Niger Delta Militants
Photo Credit: www.ibtimes.co.uk

The Federal Government says it has so far employed about 350 ex-militants from the Niger-Delta region out of the 30,000  who were sponsored abroad by the Amnesty Office.

The Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Niger-Delta and Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Brig-Gen. Paul Terela Boroh (rtd) stated this in Abuja over the weekend while briefing State House correspondents.

He said the beneficiaries had been posted to various ministries and would start earning their salaries as soon as the appropriation reports were sent to their ministries.

“The Federal government ensured that about 350 of them have been employed in the various ministries in the country. We are only waiting for appropriation so that once they report to their various ministries they will start earning their salaries,” Boroh said.

He dismissed media reports that some of the ex-militants had been either neglected or abandoned owing to the inability of the Amnesty Office to pay their school fees and allowances.

“I will never allow any of my children schooling outside the country under this government to suffer. So as we speak, 96 percent of those on off-shore scholarship have graduated and returned home.

“I have only a few, in fact not more than 10,000 of them left in the entire globe where they have been schooling, in the US, UK, Asian countries and South Africa. They have graduated and have come home.

“The ones that refused to graduate and are trying to make life unbearable for themselves,that is their own cup tea. The federal government is not responsible for them anymore,” Boroh added.

The presidential aide further stated that no date had been fixed for the collapse of the amnesty programme, adding that the Federal Government was focusing on agriculture as an alternative way of life for youth in the Niger Delta.