Beneficiaries of the Presidential Amnesty Office have alleged fraudulent withdrawal and withholding of their benefits totalling about N1.9 billion.
They alleged that the money was deducted from trainees and beneficiaries of the programme under the office of the Department of Reintegration.
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This is even as the special assistant, Media at the Amnesty Office, Freston Akpor, said the allegations are frivolous and a smear campaign against the interim administrator.
In a statement signed by the convener of the group, Michael Jonathan yesterday, the beneficiaries under the aegis of Trainees and Beneficiaries Group, alleged that the N1.9 billion were deducted from contracts that were executed under the Train, Employ and Mentor Programme initiated by a former interim administrator, Col. Milland Dikio.
The statement added that “under the programme, the beneficiaries were to be trained, employed and mentored to prevent them from straying after the programme.
“However, when General Barry Ndiomu (retd.) took over, the training of 1,200 delegates was stopped as he was said to have conducted graduation for all of them as he was under instruction to bring the programme to an end.
“Contracts were allegedly renegotiated and the Reintegration Department removed the ‘Employ and Mentor’ component with the promise that the beneficiaries would be outrightly empowered.
“This led to the alleged deduction of funds from the contracts to the tune of N1.9 billion meant to empower the delegates.”
However, after waiting endlessly for the outright empowerment, the beneficiaries and office staff are alleging that the N1.9 billion component deducted from the contracts have been diverted by the office.
The statement added that “after renegotiating with the contractors, deducted a substantial amount from the contract sum, the amnesty office went to the various training centres to offer each delegate N750,000 to completely delist them from the Amnesty Programme.
“The delegates collectively rejected the said amount. The office promised to get back to them all to no avail. The amount deducted from the negotiations with the contractors is N1.9 billion.”