Amgbare Ekaunkumo, Yenagoa
The Presidential Amnesty Scholarship Alumni (PASA) has allegedly disowned the President of the National Association for Presidential Amnesty Students Worldwide (NAPASW), Lucky Ukueku, for his failure to undermining the achievements of the Interim Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Col. Milland Dixon Dikio (retd).
PASA, who described Ukueku’s remarks in a statement that all was not well with the amnesty programme, as a cheap blackmail, said it was unacceptable, illegal and irresponsible for him to be parading himself as the leader of NAPASW despite completing his scholarship programme with PAP.
PASA in a statement signed by its Coordinator James Warigo and obtained by our Correspondent, he insisted that Ukueku had no locus to speak for the amnesty scholarship students as he was no longer part of them.
He recalled that at different fora, genuine scholarship students of PAP had poured encomiums on Dikio describing his administration, style and reforms as exceptional.
He also recalled that in September 2020 when Dikio took over PAP from the Caretaker Committee after closure of admissions, he inherited a debt burden of N71.4bn for a programme with an annual budget of N65bn.
Warigo said with prudent management of scarce resources, Dikio had been able to keep the programme afloat by ensuring prompt payments of stipends, school fees and other allowances.
Warigo observed that in 2022 alone, PAP under Dikio was able to deploy 1700 students to various institutions to make up for lost time despite restrictions imposed on such deployment.
On the complaint by Ukueku that under Dikio laptops had not been given to students, Warigo said his findings revealed that Dikio inherited a laptop scam and had put measures in place to clean up the rot before issuing new laptops.
He said Dikio would have since cleared the rot but was hindered by multiple lawsuits that had slowed down the process making the matter subjudice.
Warigo cautioned the likes of Ukueku against turning their attention-seeking and self-serving enterprise into a collective agitation adding that Ukueku should have leveraged on the academic training he got from PAP scholarship to be an ambassador of good character.
He said the entire PAP’s alumni were ashamed and highly embarrassed by the statement signed by Ukueku, who desired to remain forever a student that begged for favours and when denied would resort to all manner of subterfuge and blackmail.
