Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Professor Charles Dokubo, at the weekend disclosed that about 16,000 beneficiaries have so far graduated from training under the Programme.
He described the Amnesty Programme which has a mandate to train and re-integrate 30,000 enlisted beneficiaries, as having a bright future for Niger Delta youths.
Speaking last Friday at the grand finale of the first Amnesty Programme culinary skills competition and empowerment in Calabar, Cross Rivers State, Dokubo said the event was just one of the various steps taken by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to re-integrate beneficiaries of the Programme into society.
In a statement issued by his spokesman, Murphy Ganagana, he said: "This is the first of its kind since Amnesty started. The Amnesty Programme started with the training and re-integration of 30,000 beneficiaries, some from war-torn and conflict society back to the mainstream in our development.
"What we are witnessing here today is just one of the various steps we have taken to re-integrate people into society. We are told that the Chinese have conquered the world with their culinary effect, but here we are telling the world that Amnesty has done more than that to capture the whole of Nigeria.
"The fact is that we have to train people, empower them and bring them back to society where they truly belong and it has not been easy. I took over this office at the third phase which is the re-integration process, where you build destroyed societies, build new infrastructure, set up communities that have been dislocated by conflicts and impacted by the effect of other environmental disasters.
"I strongly believe that the step we have taken today is just the beginning; beginning in the sense that we will continue to project the work of Amnesty Programme to every nook and corners of this country to show that people could be brought back from wherever they are and also re-integrated into society,” he said.
He expressed optimism that the competition will also throw light into what Amnesty Programme can do.
“Amnesty trains people, and we have graduated up to 16,000 beneficiaries. There are a lot of people in vocational training and even in universities abroad; we are doing that to empower our people back to society, to enhance development in the Niger Delta."
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