An oil and gas transparency group, Transparency In Petroleum Exploration and Development Initiative (TIPEDI), has described as misplaced the alleged sponsored attacks on the Interim Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Program (PAP), Gen. Barry Ndiomu (rtd), over the proposed scrapping of the programme.
The group said such attacks, criticism and protest should be directed at the federal government and not the PAP boss.
While calling on the Amnesty boss to remain focused and not be distracted, the group revealed that sponsors of the media attacks have been discovered based on long-term tracking of their activities.
The Executive Director, TIPEDI, Mr. Igho Derek, in an emailed statement from London, United Kingdom, said: "We say this because it is our belief that all the frivolous and baseless accusations being made against Ndiomu so soon after his assumption of office are designed to distract his attention from the work on hand, knowing that he has a very short window within which to deliver on the mandate."
Derek, who is a past president of the South-South Peoples Assembly (SSPA) in UK and Northern Ireland, disclosed that based on long term tracking of the activities of some of those making the allegations against the PAP interim administrator, "it is obvious their motive is driven more out of selfish desires than for the collective good of the people of the oil producing areas.
"What is particularly worrisome is the fact that it is always one set of people that have been found to serially antagonise and hound past coordinators of the Amnesty Office once they perceive their interests to be threatened," he said, adding that "this situation is totally unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue unchecked."
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TIPEDI, therefore, called on the political and community leaders in the Niger Delta area, as well as the heads of the various groups of ex-agitators, who feel otherwise about the winding down of the Amnesty programme, to apply pressure on the federal government to continue with the programme instead of allowing few elements to vent their frustrations on Ndiomu.
"We believe that a man of Ndiomu's character and standing both in the military where he served meritoriously and rose to the peak of his career or in his civilian life since retiring from the army should be celebrated and encouraged to participate in public service in order to deploy his vast experiences to the benefit of the Niger Delta people and the country that he loves dearly, instead of being antagonised and vilified unjustly," the group said.
