IPDI Urges Public to Disregard Falsehoods, Misleading, Baseless Claims of Misguided Itsekiri Group Against Dr Otuaro

• Says no Itsekiri PAP scholarship students abandoned

•Insists no true ex-agitator in Itsekiri, slots enjoyed are political

By Monday Peters, Abuja

Renowned Niger Delta group, the Ijaw People’s Development Initiative, IPDI has strongly condemned the baseless, mischievous, barbaric, and misleading call to sack the administrator of the presidential Amnesty programme, Dr Dennis Brutu Otuaro on non-existed allegations of bias and exclusion by misguided and disgruntled persons from Itsekiri, adding that the claims were unfounded and a mere campaign of calumny and should be regarded.

In a statement signed by its national president Comrade Ozobo Austin said it was not true that the itsekiri ex-agitators were shortchanged, emphasising that the ongoing training programme of PAP was meant for top leaders and commanders of the programme and not for political slots bearers of the programme like Itsekiri.

The IPDI boss said that the Itsekiris that outrightly rejected the Amnesty offer in the beginning of the programme were not qualified to benefit from the amnesty programme, adding that it was out of the benevolence of the Ijaw People that they were given five hundred (500) political slots much later of the proclamation of the programme.

He stressed that during the amnesty proclamation in 2009, the Itsekiris wrote on Vanguard and other newspapers that they did not have militant youths, and would not embrace the programme, making mockery of Ijaw people but surprisingly the same people shamelessly wrote all manners of blackmails.

Ozobo challenged the Itsekiris who were making false claims to tell the public where their disarmament points were, who were their leaders and commanders that embraced the programme in the earlier stage.

IPDI said Itsekiri PAP beneficiaries should be grateful to Dr Otuaro and Ijaw people for the benevolence and considering them in the programme despite they were not captured in the program, maintaining that those blackmailing Dr Otuaro were enemies of Niger Delta and not true beneficiaries of the presidential Amnesty programme.

The group urged the general public to disregard issues of alleged exclusion, marginalization, and neglect raised by unmanned Itsekiri miscreants.

The IPDI urged Itsekiri political-beneficiaries of the programme to appreciate the support they have received from both Dr. Otuaro and the Ijaw nation.

While calling on the public to dismiss misleading claims of exclusion from disgruntled parties, the group asserted that no Itsekiri scholarship student under the PAP programme has been neglected, aside from an illegitimate list previously submitted to Novena University by suspected Itsekiri fraudsters which was rejected by prior administrations.

The statement read, “no Itsekiri PAP scholarship student was abandoned, or shortchanged except the list of over Five Thousand (5000) persons that were fraudulently sent to Novena in the name of PAP by some Itsekiri miscreants without the knowledge of PAP which was turned down by the previous administrations”.