34 Ex-militants to become lawyers, says Presidential Amnesty office

By David Owei

The Special Adviser to the President on the Niger Delta and Coordinator, Presidential Amnesty, Prof Charles Dokubo, has said about 34 ex-agitators would be called to bar this year.

Dokubo, who stated this during an interactive session last week in Asaba, said the welfare of the beneficiaries of the amnesty programme was his priority.

Dokubo, represented by his Special Assistant on Media, Mr. Murphy Ganagana, said 207 students spread across 66 institutions in 20 countries were studying various courses.

He said, “We have about 34 beneficiaries of this amnesty programme that will be called to bar this year. We visited students sponsored by the Amnesty Programme in London and met with 47 students and recent graduates from 25 institutions in the UK at the Nigeria High Commission.

“The objective of the visit was to evaluate the students’ academic progress, celebrate those completing their programmes and charge the remaining ones to be good ambassadors of the programme. We also wanted to hear directly from the students, see the progression in their academics and their general well-being, as well as interact with the Nigeria High Commission representatives.

“Following appeals from students for the amendment of educational policies, particularly for offshore education, some of which had severe negative impact on them, I constituted a policy review committee to undertake the assignment with a view to ensuring that students under the amnesty programme successfully graduate, and for the Federal Government to reap its investment.”

The amnesty coordinator said the committee’s reports indicated that there were no policies to guide operations of the Onshore Education Unit for the past five years, adding that effort was being made to draft new policies.