From Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
The Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) has integrated the Southeast business model in its training and empowerment of ex-agitators to reduce beneficiaries’ over-dependence on monthly stipends.
The Interim Administrator PAP, Col. Milland Dixon Dikio (retd), explained that the new model would transform delegates into skilled entrepreneurs and employable citizens.
Dikio in a statement signed by his Special Adviser, Media, Nneotaobase Egbe, said the new model was designed to make trainees contribute meaningfully to the economy of the Niger Delta region and the country.
The presidential aide, who described the new system as an end-to-end empowerment model, said that PAP would partner with organisations ready and capable of training its delegates, employing successful trainees and mentoring them to achieve post training proficiency.
According to him, the system would stop the current multiplicity of the same empowerment and substandard packages that were not in line with the vision for the Amnesty Programme.
Dikio further explained that vendors, who wished to start their training and empowerment programmes for beneficiaries, must obtain a letter of approval.
In a related development Dikio has urged students under PAP’s scholarship programme to pursue entrepreneurial initiatives that would make them employers of labour instead of waiting for companies to engage them.
While commending the students for choosing dialogue instead of agitation, Dikio said students were expected to go back to their communities after graduation as good ambassadors of the Niger Delta to contribute to the development and economy of the region.