Former Niger Delta agitators have faulted the previous administration for not being able to tackle issues of reintegration of members in the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP).
   
They lauded the Interim Administrator of PAP, Maj. Gen. Barry Ndiomu (rtd), and President Bola Tinubu for the ongoing reforms in PAP being implemented by the current management.
   
The ex-agitators stated these during an interactive session organised by PAP for phase two leaders in Calabar. Brainstorming on the betterment of the programme, the ex-agitators seek for sustained implementation of the scholarship initiative, as well as the recently initiated cooperative programme.
 
One of the leaders of PAP phase two, Ibena Rufus, said the programme made a lot of progress under the current tenure of Ndiou.
Rufus, who is also the spokesman of the ex-agitators’ leaders’ forum, explained that though reintegration of members was a huge setback in the previous administration.it was rectified in the current interim administration.

Ibena recalled that the PAP started with disarmament and demobilisation, which were successful, but ran into issues when it got to the reintegration aspect.
    
He said: “The previous administrator could not tackle issues of reintegration, but the current administrator has demonstrated capacity and resilience to tackle it.”
   
He commended the Interim Administrators for restructuring the programme and taking it back to the people. On his part, the Chairman of PAP Phase Two, Olutu Wanemi, applauded the empowerment of the entire 30,000 beneficiaries of the programme by the current management, noting that no administration has ever done that.
   
His words: “None of the leaders had earlier thought of empowering the entire 30,000 beneficiaries but we were shocked when the Interim Administrator came on board and introduced the cooperative scheme to accommodate everybody.”