Prof. Charles Dokubo, the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Coordinator, Amnesty Programme, Presidential Amnesty Office, has said his office has uncovered irregularities in previous deployment of delegates for educational programmes at some universities in the country.
Murphy Ganagana, Special Assistant (Media) to the Special Adviser on Niger Delta and Coordinator, Amnesty Programme disclosed this in a statement.
The discovery, Dokubo said, followed a verification exercise ordered by the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Coordinator, Presidential Amnesty Programme, on assumption of office.
He said that a committee set up to ascertain the number of beneficiaries of the Amnesty programme hitherto deployed in universities onshore for various educational programmes, discovered that an alarming number of students enrolled in universities under the Amnesty Programme were not captured in the Data Base at the Amnesty Office.
Against the backdrop of huge tuition fees forwarded to the Amnesty Office for payment by some universities in the country for supposed beneficiaries deployed in the institutions for study, Prof. Dokubo constituted a committee headed by the Head of Reintegration, Amnesty Office, Chief Aroloyeteim Brown, to verify beneficiaries of the Amnesty Programme in local universities.
The committee was, among others, mandated to ascertain admission process of the students into the various institutions; determine whether the students were beneficiaries of the Amnesty Programme, and, if not, who was responsible for their admission or deployment.
He also said the committee was also probing the disparity in tuition fees for students deployed by the Amnesty Office and others undergoing same programmes at the institutions, and to ascertain if there had been insider collaboration to pad fees of delegates for pecuniary interests.
“The committee which is rounding off its assignment, has however, uncovered large scale fraud in previous deployment of delegates not captured in the data base of beneficiaries of the Amnesty Programme to various universities within the country.
“Checks indicated that while a new university (identity withheld) recently forwarded a list of 62 pre-degree students to the Amnesty Office for payment of tuitions fees, the committee discovered that only 14 of them were captured in the data base of beneficiaries of the Amnesty Programme. Only 34 out of 201 first year students at another new university in the Southeastern part of the country were also cleared as beneficiaries in the Amnesty database,” he said.
In the same vein, the names of 200 first year students out of a total of 290 sent to the Amnesty Office for payment of tuition fees by three universities in the South-south (names withheld) could not be verified on the database of beneficiaries. The names of only 90 students from the three institutions were verified.
However, the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Coordinator, Amnesty Programme, Prof. Charles Dokubo is deeply concerned over this worrisome development, especially the plight of the affected students and he is exploring measures to address the situation after meeting the management of the affected institutions.
