Trump in the eyes of history – Newtelegraph

The Presidential Amnesty Programme established to restore peace and security in the Niger Delta region recently clocked 10 years. In this interview, Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs and Coordinator of the Amnesty Office, Prof. Charles Dokubo, shares with ONWUKA NZESHI, some of the challenges confronting the scheme and moves to change the narrative

In recent months there have been speculations that you have been the guest of the anti-corruption agencies in the country. Are you under investigation?

I’m not under any investigation. As far as I know, I am not under any investigation. Most of the time, when I go to EFCC and DSS, it is about past queries on the activities of the programme even when I was not part of the organization. If I tell you that I am still receiving letters from EFCC, DSS on Timi Alaibe, Kingsley Kuku and Boroh, you may not believe it. But these are the reasons why I have been going to these places and not for anything related to my term in office.

There were also speculations of your being sacked from your job. What’s the true position?

I came from an institution where I know that after some years you will be promoted and all that stuff. It is a structured institution. When I came to this office, I didn’t know that this was the terrain. But for me, if you are doing your job right, you have nothing to fear. If you have done it wrongly, let people come and investigate you and establish the facts. But if somebody just sits down somewhere and concocts something, you begin to wonder where he got it. The environment in our region is caustic. Everybody wants to be an SA (Special Adviser).

In fact in the last few months, they said that the President has not written to me to stay in the office and as a result they want the office. Some people took me to court. It is the President that appoints and it was he that appointed me and I know the instruction given to me – to redirect and complete the Amnesty Programme. I’m just saying it for the first time. I know the content of the appointment.

It is at the pleasure of the President and it is only him that can say: Charles, you’re not doing your work very well, go. For me appointment is not for life. It is only those who have taken it so seriously that would want to die for it. I will not die for any office. I will like to live beyond this office.

How many consultations do you have with stakeholders in view of the petitions and protests that are directed at the programme?

I do consult with stakeholders, especially the credible stakeholders. In the last one month, I’ve been to Uyo and Calabar and that is stage one and two. As for the phase three, I am planning to meet more stakeholders including the foot soldiers of the so called Big Five. In the course of these consultations sometimes there are some questions that they would ask that tell you that some don’t fully understand the nature of this programme.

They will tell you that the government promised to build bungalows for everybody. I don’t know which government made such a promise. It is an erroneous belief. In the discussion during the time President Yar’Adua set up the programme, there may have been some proposals of that nature but it is not in the programme and we cannot go beyond what is in the programme. Furthermore, there are also some states in the Niger Delta that are not adequately represented in the Amnesty Programme.

I’m talking about states like Ondo, Delta, Abia and Imo. If you look at the conflict that engulfed the Niger Delta before this programme was born, you can also know where the main actors came from and like I said, it does not mean that you are from the Niger Delta and so you must be part of the programme. If you want to be part of the programme, it is only the President that can make the inclusion and not my office. This is because the inclusion will mean budgetary expansion. I can neither include not exclude any body from the programme. I don’t have that power.

My responsibility is to run the programme as it is and whenever I am told to stop. So I do consult widely but we are in a peculiar region. Any time you talk about Amnesty Programme, you look at the regional set up. Where are the petitions coming from? You can identify it because there are certain parts of the Niger Delta that believe that everything about the region is theirs and every appointment for the Niger Delta must go to them.

But the truth is that there are so many competent hands in the region and those who have been identified could also be appointed because it does not belong to a particular people. No group has the living right that they must be appointed as head of the Amnesty Programme. It depends on the President who is s the appointing authority and he could appoint anybody he believes can do the job.

So that is why when people protest, I look at them and I say, judge me by my works, fault me where I have not done well and not by where I come from. If you go by the history of the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme, there were times that people were not paid their stipends for three months.

There was a time I paid two months stipends at a go. When I took over the office, the account was blocked for three months because they were carrying out verifications about my predecessor. So when the account was reopened, I paid the two months at a go. I don’t think that those who are beneficiaries of this programme will question my payment of stipends. For me, a stipend is the mistaken important aspect of the programme. As long as those in the creeks are getting their alerts and they see their money, you buy peace at that time. It’s only when you refuse to pay that you will invite trouble. But how can someone refuse to pay government money that has been apportioned for a programme? If some people do that, I can’t do it because I won’t be able to sleep.

Even when you know that the money has nothing takes time to come, you face a lot of stress attending to their enquiries about when the money will hit their accounts as if the money is there and you’ve not paid them. If you tell them you are waiting for government to pay the money, some of them might not believe you. I’m sure that in the past some of them may have gone through this process of giving false information about the stipends. So in evaluating the programme you have to look at the nuances that the programme is not for an individual or for a family.

What were some of those things you met on ground that you didn’t like and want to change in the programme?

I don’t want to castigate anybody, impugn on any person’s prestige or try to pull anybody down. I met a situation where certain things were not in their right places. When I joined I started off from where I met it and ever since I came on board, I have changed the direction and the trajectory of the programme. The Amnesty Programme has been bedeviled by a lot of problems in the past. When you come to an environment where certain people have entrenched themselves in the system and you try to bring a new system, there is always some resistance.

I came in at the third phase, which is the Reintegration Phase of the Amnesty Programme where you can train people and provide jobs for them. The purpose is that they could work, earn salaries and stop depending on the stipend that is become part of the culture in the Niger Delta.

So what I did was to try and carve a niche for the programme in the sense that we were now going to train them and give them the equipment that would help them to work and fend for themselves. In the alternative we were to also create a Job Placement in the Amnesty Office so that those who have been trained can find job opportunities or we can look for jobs for them. But in doing this, I met a lot of challenges. Remember that here in Nigeria l, fresh graduates don’t even earn up to N50,000 and when somebody could stay at home and earn N65,000, if you give him a job of N50,000, he would reject it.

There is a missing gap in that narrative because they failed to understand that when you get a job, you are going to progress from the starting point to earn a higher pay over time. It does not even occur to my people that you can earn twice as much as your initial salary if you stay on the job for some time. This is the saddening thing for me because I believe that this programme cannot be forever.

It is very critical that we make it people -centred and ensure we look into the future.

What specific methods have you adopted to drive your agenda?

I’ve just finished a meeting with the Monitoring and Evaluation (ME) Unit because when the programme started, there was a Stand by Me programme peopled by those who were there at the beginning of the programme and who knew how it all started. But at a particular time, they removed them from the office, so I have brought them back. I’m now having meetings with them and they have been trying to point out the missing links in the programme. When I sat down with them to review what we have been doing, I became convinced that there is need for a change in the direction of the programme.

The essence is to ensure that whatever we are doing should be done well and we cut down on the number of portfolio contractors in the place. The highlight for me was putting the facts on the ground which means putting structures down that will enable our people to be trained and have the required certifications so that they could have jobs. If they don’t have jobs and they are totally dependent on the stipend culture, no positive changes will occur in the Niger Delta. Unless you prepare the minds of our people to this change, any government of whatever political complexion will one day ask: We have done a lot for your people, where are the results? So that’s our new focus now. We are building structures so that people could go and get trained in vocational centres which are also linked to universities.

The universities will be the certifying institutions so that graduates of our training programmes can get jobs anywhere because you have a certificate from a university in Nigeria. This is where I am directing the programme towards but even then, there are still a lot of challenges.

A certain group of contractors have been throwing stones at your administration for allegedly side-lining them. What is happening?

It was in Amnesty Office that I first heard of Vendors Association and contracts were awarded to them without following a competitive bidding process. I told them that we don’t give contract to groups but to individuals who are competent and prepared to do the jobs.

So these are some of challenges that I met and I have tried to change the way things are done but it has been difficult.

What is your real grouse with the group?

I don’t have any personal problem with them except that I am not comfortable with their mode of operation.

These are people who want to be awarded contracts as a group. How can that be?

Contracts are awarded to individual companies who have the capacity to perform and deliver the jobs. So what sort of association are they? I have never heard of such before I joined the Amnesty Programme.

When I came they were already on ground. But for me, it was an illicit way of getting contracts and then not performing or delivering on those contracts because they claim that they come from the region.

This sense of entitlement pervades whatever they do there. If you’ve done a contract, you must bring a Certificate of Completion because it is based on that that the Amnesty Office will pay you. But like I mentioned, we have to cut off the fifteen percent because for most people, fifteen percent was like a free gift and once you get it, you run.

They won’t even come back to do the job. Yes, the 15 percent was supposed to be mobilisation fee for the contract and later when you have done the job up to a certain level, you come back for more. But when we looked at it and people just take the money and run away. Some of them even use multiple companies to have this fifteen percent mobilisation fee.

So we looked at our liabilities and when we saw that most of those who collected fifteen percent did not do any job, we wrote to them that before you take anything from us you must complete the work because we are not doing a direct labour service.

This is a contract awarded to you and you must deliver for you to be paid. The other issue is that some of these people who parade themselves as vendors, they don’t even have the resources to execute contracts. So they go and sell it at the Hilton. When you get to the foyer of the Hilton, you will find contracts flying all over the place because they can’t do it. They are not used to doing contracts. So it is a different mix.

If people are capable and willing to do the jobs, one would be encouraged.

If you look at the company’s profile and see the track records that the contractor can do the job, it is a different thing. They believe that because they come from the region they must give those contracts and any one that has that sense of entitlement is doing a lot of damage to the entire region. You should get contracts not because you are from the Nigeria Delta but because you have the capacity and capability to do the job. It is then and only then that you should be given a contract.

There are also complaints by certain groups about the scholarship scheme and payment of school fees to beneficiaries. Could you throw more light on these issues?

When I took over the scheme, there were 30,000 beneficiaries of the Amnesty Programme. I am sorry to say it but I will still say that it is still 30,000 after ten years.

What it means is that nobody died and nobody graduated from the training institutions. I later discovered that Amnesty in the Niger Delta had become a family thing. If somebody who is a beneficiary dies, his son gets it. We have seen letters from solicitors writing to us that someone’s father has died and the son must take over.

It is only in this country that an amnesty programme is seen as a family inheritance. Ideally, it is an individual who drops down his gun and is given the benefit of demobilisation and reintegration so that he can become a reformed citizen of the country. But in the Niger Delta, it’s a different kettle of fish and that is why you can see the struggles, protests and the contest for power. This mentality is that the office is ours and why should anyone stop the programme?

So we need a new thinking. Let’s make a change. We have trained a lot of people but sometimes our success stories are turned against us. If you go and display to people that you got a first class degree and all that, others will ask, are they the only people that will go to universities? Why can’t you also get this Amnesty and go to the university. But what happened later was that there was a new concept known as impacted communities.

These were communities that were not directly affected by the conflict but their means of livelihood was also affected as a result of the conflict in the region. So Amnesty Programme is not only providing for the ex-militants but also those whose lives have been affected by the conflict. So that is why, sometimes when you look at the numbers that we are still taking care of, it is burgeoning and even frightening. If you look at the number of people who have been trained and undergone certifications, they are more than 10,000. However, it appears that the data base has also been corrupted.

When you also look at our budget for school fees, it is also increasing. Before I took office, there was deployment of about 800 students to various schools and these people did not go through the Amnesty Office but passed through some unknown persons who took money from them and put their names into the scheme while their names were not originally in the programme.

This is why I say that Amnesty Programme is for Niger Deltans but not all Niger Deltans are beneficiaries of the programme. Some of the people you see complaining are not part of the programme, they were not in the picture when the militants were demobilised. For you to be captured by the programme, you must have a UN number. Many of the initial people who were on the programme have died. So many of those who are making trouble today, weren’t part of the programme.

If you arrest them and ask them to provide their UN code, they can’t provide it and they can’t tell you where they were demobilised. This is another challenge we face.

You’ve said that the culture of paying stipends to people is not sustainable and should give way to training and jobs. When do you think this change will take place?

For me the N65,000 stipend per person is a very important thing for the programme. But when I was appointed, there was also something they called bulk payment which is a system that you pay monies to the leader of a group through a particular account.

Subsequently the leader will disburse the fund to his people. It is an unfair system in the sense that when the money gets into the hand if the person who owns that account, in most cases, the sixty five thousand will turn to thirty thousand. When I took office, I had an intention to attack that system of payment and let everyone get his personal account with personalised bio-metric verification numbers (BVN) but I looked at the time.

It was a political time, election time and all those things. You have to look at all these factors carefully before you take anything step in that direction because that environment could go back into conflict if you take any unpopular action. So whatever you are doing with that region you have to be very careful and do some proactive thinking.

Since you noticed that there could be some problems with your data for payments, why don’t you commission an audit of your system?

Some personal have advised that we should give the security agencies the responsibility of auditing the stipends. You know why that could be the solution?

There could be room for possible deniability on our path while the security agencies get to the root of the issue. I think it is time for us to do that because when I took office I was told that there were what they called fake camps. I don’t want to go into it because I belong to that region and I don’t want to say anything that is derogatory of those who have held that office because I will also go one day.

The fact is that there were mistakes that were made at the beginning that are still disturbing the progress of the programme. If you want to audit the whole programme, you will need to shut down the database and conduct a forensic audit.

It will take about two to three months. But then, how are you going to pay those on stipends whose welfare is critical to the programme during that period? So you can see that we are caught between and betwixt in the sense that if you do, you are damned and if you don’t do, you will be accused.

But for me, as I took over the office, all payments, stipends, school fees, to whoever, are handled by the Central Bank. We have seen cases whereby universities in Nigeria over-invoiced students and they were asked by the Office of the NSA (National Security Adviser) to return money.

In some cases, they over charged our Amnesty programme students who are Nigerians like every other students of the institution.

Some universities want us to even pay security money for students of the Amnesty programme but I told them that security includes everybody, you cannot separate the security of a student from the security of the other students.

Why must my Amnesty student pay money for security? So these are the things, even institutions in the country are not helping matters. These people have been stigmatised because they are ex-militants.

What do they have to do a in university environment? I also questioned the idea if sending out students abroad through vendors. Yes, we’re playing catch up, but there is a right way of playing the catch up.

If there is a biometric audit we will be able to overcome some of these challenges. I know that once you say that there will be protests, but it will be said very soon. People will have to go to designated locations with their ID cards and be screened without which you will not be paid. It will help the programme and it will help the country