The Federal Government has advised beneficiaries of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) in the Niger Delta region to prepare for life after oil.
Speaking at a forum to mark the United Nations 2017 International Youth Day, in Port Harcourt, Presidential Adviser on the Amnesty Programme, Brig-Gen Paul Boroh (rtd), urged the youth to make use of the skills, knowledge and experience they gained during training.
“Since it has become clear that oil will not last forever, there is need to prepare the youth for the future”, Boroh said.
He noted that the amnesty programme had the mandate to train 30,000 youth, out of which, it had already trained 16,000.
Boroh assured that the Federal Government was doing everything humanly possible to train the remaining set of repentant militants under the amnesty programme, saying that was the best way to guarantee peace and sustainable development of the region.
Also speaking, Rivers State Director, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Oliver Wolugbom, expressed concern that Nigerian youth were increasingly engaged in kidnapping, cultism, armed robbery, thuggery and other anti-social acts.
“It is equally a source of concern that all the centrifugal forces such as separatist movements by ethnic bodies and their accompanying hate speeches are being bandied by the youth.
“For peace to be built in the society, the youth must be properly positioned while the leadership re-strategises to plan for the future devoid of violence and criminality,” Wolugbom argued.
