Ijaw youths on Tuesday opposed the December terminal date for the Presidential Amnesty granted ex-militants from the Niger Delta region.
The youths rose from their meeting at the Izonware headquarters of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) Worldwide in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, and declared that the deadline was not feasible.
Flanked by executive members of the council, the President of IYC, Mr. Udens Eradiri, insisted that stopping the amnesty programme in December will not work.
He said there were many issues surrounding the programme that had not been addressed such as the training of some set of ex-militants, rising wave of insecurity in the region and issues of post-amnesty.
He said: “The December deadline to terminate the amnesty programme is not feasible. The IYC is looking at it and we have already forwarded a document to the Amnesty Coordinator, asking him to look at those who have been trained, those who have not been trained, how do we also capture those boys in the creeks and the insecurity that is going on in the Niger Delta.
“The coordinator, having come out with a holistic view of the process, should be able to advise President Muhammadu Buhari that the deadline is not feasible.
“It is worthy of note that the amnesty programme itself is a security programme. It is as important as the Northeast. And so you cannot begin to set time lines when the process, the entire programme needs to go through, has not been completed.
“In our own view as the IYC, we do not see December as a feasible termination date for the programme.”
Eradiri said the council will soon engage the authorities and make them realise the dangers of terminating the amnesty in December.
He added: “It was not Buhari that fixed December deadline. The date was fixed by the past administration. Between the time they fixed December as termination date, there were approvals that were made in between when agitations started coming from other ethnic nationalities including other youths in the Niger Delta that were not captured.
“The President at that time approved on one occasion 6,000 persons and another occasion 3,000 to benefit from the programme. So, it is not possible to change the rule of a game in the middle of the game. So, all those adjustments will certainly affect the terminal date.”
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