Presidency slams Lai Mohammed on amnesty for ex-militants

The Presidency, yesterday, berated  the interim National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Lai Mohammed for dismissing its amnesty programme for repentant Niger Delta militants as a drainpipe.

The APC spokesman had on a national television programme last Wednesday derided the amnesty programme currently being implemented by the Federal Government, saying it amounted to a sheer waste of national resources and energy, having failed to curb militancy, oil theft and pipeline vandalisation.

Mohammed’s verbal attack on the programme came barely six weeks after a similar assault by the National Leader of the APC, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu, who also wrote off the amnesty exercise as a waste. But the Presidency in a response to the attack, said Mohammed was economical with the truth and had deliberately refused to acknowledge the wonders brought about by the faithful implementation of the amnesty package by Presidential Amnesty Office, PAO,  headed by Kingsley Kuku.

The statement signed by the Head of Media and Communications of the PAO, Mr. Daniel   Alabrah, said it was only those suffering from the twin malaise of amnesia and diarrhoea that would fail to see the success of the programme, which was initiated by the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua administration in 2009.

Labrah, who acknowledged the rising incidence of oil theft in the Niger Delta, however, exonerated the former militants from the act, blaming it on what he called “international syndicates.”