The Ijaw People's Development Initiative, IPDI, an advocacy group in the Niger Delta region, has strongly condemned what it described as "the baseless, mischievous, barbaric, and misleading call" for the sack of the Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), High Chief Dr Dennis Otuaro, by those it said are "misguided and disgruntled persons from Itsekiri" over unfounded allegations of bias and exclusion.

The IPDI in a statement that was signed by its National President, Comrade Ozobo Austin, said that the claims were a mere campaign of calumny and should be disregarded.

The group also stated that it was not true that the itsekiri ex-agitators were shortchanged, and emphasised that the ongoing training programme of PAP was meant for top leaders and commanders of the programme, not for political slot bearers of the programme, a grade it said the Itsekiri belonged to.

The IPDI boss said that the Itsekiris, who 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 500 political slots much later after the proclamation of the programme.

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

The IPDI 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.

The group also said that the Itsekiri PAP beneficiaries should be grateful to Otuaro and the Ijaw people for the benevolence in considering them in the programme despite they were not captured in the programme, maintaining that those blackmailing Otuaro were enemies of the Niger Delta and are not true beneficiaries of the PAP.

The group further urged the general public to disregard issues of alleged exclusion, marginalization, and neglect raised by unmasked Itsekiri miscreants, while it urged Itsekiri political beneficiaries of the programme to appreciate the support they have received from both Otuaro and the Ijaw Nation.

The group further 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.

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