TheCable

The Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) has announced plans to partner with the Nigerian Navy to create jobs for ex-militants in the Niger Delta area.

The amnesty programme was put in place by the administration of the late Umaru Yar’Adua in 2009 to address the agitations of the Niger Delta people.

At the time, the Niger Delta people decried the underdevelopment of the region and several persons took to arms in protest.

Speaking on Friday when he received Awwal Gambo, chief of naval staff, Barry Tariye Ndiomu, PAP’s interim administrator, said his organisation is ready to work with the navy to empower the ex-militants.

“We will be very happy to explore ways and means to bring this collaboration to reality,” Ndiomu, who was represented by Wilfred Musa, head of reintegration, said.

“I want to believe that among other things, this is the highest level of this meeting. I was amazed by the garment-making unit of the school. It is so elaborate.

“We have run dozens of trainings in the past but we have never had the opportunity to work with any of the academies that have the amount of infrastructure and the layout of what we saw at the naval engineering school.

“They make the garment there and they brand them. They stitch and they package. What that tells us is that we can have our delegates acquire that skill and also understand what it means to specialise and they will have good appreciation of the value chain.

“An end-to-end of it is that you can decide to major as a monogramming expert or as the one who is branding while another man is making the garment.

“We observed that it was one man to one machine. So, there is no excuse for saying you don’t have a machine.”

On his part, Sdel Ladan, a rear admiral who represented the naval chief, expressed the navy’s willingness to work with PAP.