President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua established the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) on June 25, 2009, with very lofty objectives. The idea was to grant amnesty to militants in the Niger Delta region, with the aim of ending armed conflict in the region, disarming, and reintegrating the militants into the society.
Ultimately, this was expected to promote sustainable peace, security and development in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’s cash cow, so that oil exploration could continue peacefully there.
Over 26 years later, the programme has indeed come of age. Although PAP was designed to last for about 60 days, with the militants required to surrender their weapons, renounce armed struggle, and sign disarmament forms within a 60-day window, it has since undergone several metamorphoses. It is good to note, today, that the programme is delivering the desired dividends. Many former agitators have been transformed through training, education and empowerment.
The late President Yar’Adua must have been elated wherever he is, to hear one of the latest success stories of the products of his creation: the graduation of some of the products of the scheme in the last academic session in several universities in the country. Thirty-two of them bagged First Class degrees while 134 graduated with Second-Class (Upper Division) in various courses of study.
Irrespective of the number of them that benefitted from the PAP scholarship, the fact that they turned out 32 First Class degree holders and 134 of them also bagged Second Class (Upper Division), is significant. And to know that these were essentially in courses that are in hot demand in the country and indeed several parts of the world.
We are talking about courses like Computer Science, Mass Communication, Anatomy, International Relations and Diplomacy, Geography and Regional Planning, Microbiology, Public Health, Information Technology, Medical Laboratory Science and Estate Management.
Other courses are Law, Pharmacy, Aeronautical Engineering, Cybersecurity, Electrical Engineering, Software Engineering, Nursing Science, Mechanical Engineering, Architecture, Accounting and Criminology.
Little wonder an excited PAP Administrator, Dr Dennis Brutu Otuaro, was full of praise to the lucky beneficiaries, for making the
Federal Government, the PAP Office, their communities and the Niger Delta proud.
Otuaro was greatly encouraged by their exemplary conduct and seriousness as shown by the quality of their academic grades.
Who would not be? That is the kind of reaction that accompanies success. It is only failure that is an orphan.
Hear the PAP boss: “We are indeed happy with the excellent academic performances of our scholarship students in 2025. The number of beneficiaries, all from the Niger Delta, that made First Class and Second-Class (Upper Division) is very encouraging. We commend all of them for the great feats.
“But these commendable academic achievements indicate that we are focused on the implementation of the PAP mandate for the transformation of the Niger Delta through educational and vocational schemes.”
But Otuaro is not only grateful to the scholarship beneficiaries, he also lauded President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his support. True, without presidential support, the beneficiaries might not have been able to achieve their aim of going to the university.
We need to thank the president for continuing with the programme. He did not see it in the context that many other Nigerian politicians would have seen it; that is seeing it as a programme started by the (now) opposition party, but simply looked at it based on merit and decided to continue with it.
“We express our deep appreciation to His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR. Without his strong support, these impressive academic feats of our scholarship students and all the success stories recorded would not have been achieved.”
Anyone following the Tinubu government’s agenda for education, particularly university education, would have seen his passion for this level of learning in the various actions he has taken in less than three years in office.
We have the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), which,
as of today, over 983,000 students have benefited from, with more than ₦183 billion disbursed to cover tuition and upkeep allowances across 265+ tertiary institutions across the country. It is the first of its kind in the country in over three decades.
Again, just last month, the government struck an agreement that many people hoped would be the mother of all agreements between the government and the university lecturers whose union, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), was hitherto notorious for shutting down the universities than opening them for learning.
Several aspects of the condition of service of university teachers have been improved upon and there is some relative calm on our university campuses. We can only hope that this would endure.
In Nigeria, we like to politicise nearly everything. When Yar’Adua came up with the idea of amnesty for Niger Delta militants, some people made similar calls for bandits and terrorists in the northern parts of the country.
The point is; there is no correlation between both. The Niger Delta had been unfairly treated by successive governments over the decades despite being the country’s cash cow. Their environment was despoiled, their rivers polluted and the place, until very recently, looked like some deserted homestead.
This led to agitations by the youths in the area, that resulted in the country’s declining revenue due to the inability of the oil firms to lift the required amount of crude in the place. Indeed, it got to a point when President Yar’Adua became convinced that the only way to increase the country’s crude exploration from the region was by taking care of the requests of the restive youths, hence, his coming up with the idea of PAP.
How then can we compare this to banditry and terrorism? How could anyone have successfully proved that the north was marginalised when, for the better part of the years in question northerners were the ones ruling the country? How could they have opened their region to marginalisation?
The truth is; banditry and terrorism are offshoot of different kinds of problems that no one could fairly blame the Nigerian governments for. The problems and their answers lie somewhere else.
Be that as it may, it is gratifying that the seed that Yar’Adua planted has been germinating and bringing forth good harvests.
It is noteworthy that the latest batch of PAP graduates are not the first to make us all proud. There have been several others who excelled even outside of the country.
Last year alone, the programme was expected to deliver about 712 graduates.
Aside these latest celebrators, the programme had produced many other graduate and post-graduate achievers. For instance, nine of the post-graduate students sent abroad under the programme bagged Master’s degrees in various disciplines last year.
The successful scholars were the first graduates in the offshore post-graduate scholarship deployment to institutions in the United Kingdom by the Otuaro-led PAP. They graduated from the Anglia Ruskin University, University of Dundee and The University of Law in the United Kingdom, with Master’s degrees in Cyber Security, Data Science and Engineering, Law, Construction and Civil Engineering Management, Project Management and ICT.
The point must be made that what PAP is achieving in the Niger Delta makes the huge difference in transforming people who are ready and willing to be transformed. Whenever I see people who could otherwise have ended up as persona non grata becoming something, something leaps for joy in me.
We can only imagine how these bright minds who took advantage of the PAP scheme to develop themselves would have ended up in the creeks, without hope and with nothing, only to be causing problems for innocent citizens in the country.
Nigeria cannot but continue with this arrangement.
Other parts of the country must learn from this Niger Delta example. God did not create anyone to be useless. It is the society and sometimes government policies that turn people’s fortune around for the worst. It is the same government policy that has brought the best out from youths who otherwise could have ended up as ghetto or creek products in the absence of such policy.
PAP is a veritable way of promoting human capital development and peace in the Niger Delta, and, by extension, the country.
I urge current PAP scholarship beneficiaries in different universities to emulate their predecessors and study hard to maintain the impressive academic record.
The programme is a win-win for us all: the beneficiaries, the Niger Delta and Nigeria as a whole.
I cannot but commend the supervisory role that the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, played in the matter.
I also want to believe that the Federal Government has taken ‘judicial note’ of Otuaro’s ‘threat:: “The people of the Niger Delta are happy with Mr President and what his administration is doing for the region, and will react in due course with the right expression of gratitude.”
As we say here in ‘The Nation’: “people talk to people and people understand”!
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