Amnesty programme sends 75 ex-militants to aviation schools

The Interim Administrator, Presidential Amnesty Programme, Barry Ndiomu, has said no fewer than 75 ex-Niger Delta militants have benefited from the programmes aviation training scheme.Ndiomu said the ex-militants are currently at aviation training organisations in Lagos, South Africa, and France.He noted that after their aviation programmes, the ex-militants would either become pilots or aircraft engineers.Ndiomu disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday at an event organised to commemorate the International Day for Eradication of Poverty.He said, “The PAP under my leadership is creatively setting up opportunities to impact the lives of ex-agitators, beyond dependence on N65,000 monthly stipends.“PAP has sponsored 75 pilots and aircraft engineers to various Aviation Training Organizations in Lagos (Nigeria), Johannesburg (South Africa), and Toulouse, (France) for type-rating courses as part of its aviation training scheme.”Ndiomu added that the initiatives of the PAP had so far introduced creation of windows of opportunities for ex-agitators to escape the prediction of the World Bank which estimates that over the next decade one billion young people will try to enter the job market, but fewer than half of them will get employed.He recalled that when late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua instituted the Presidential Amnesty Programme in 2009, the age range of ex-agitators who laid down their arms, was between 25 and 30.He noted that 14 years later, they have attained an unemployable age range of between 50 to 55 years.The interim administrator, however, said over 700 ex-agitators had received loans to undertake Agribusiness and other lucrative ventures, while 2500 applications are waiting to be processed.