PAP probes 3,000 accounts, stops payment of fake contractors

By MIKE ODIEGWU, Port Harcourt

The Interim Administrator, Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Col. Milland Dixion Dikio (rtd), discovered in his first year in office that the amnesty payroll was padded with 400 duplicated names, it was learnt on Tuesday.

The Special Adviser on Media to Dikio, Neotaobase Egbe, said the discovery led to deeper investigations into the authenticity of over 3000 accounts receiving the N65, 000 monthly stipends.

He said a preliminary probe revealed that some of the accounts were fake and fraudulently used to siphon funds meant for original ex-agitators.

“Immediately the investigation was ordered, the amnesty office stopped the stipends of the accounts undergoing probe. It is the right to do.

“I can tell you that some of the accounts had been cleared and their owners will receive their stipends. But there will be deeper probe to discover the identities of persons receiving monies through identified fake accounts,” he said.

Egbe said Dikio was determined to cleanse the system to ensure that amnesty’s resources were expended on real and verifiable ex-agitators and not on impostors.

He said some angry contractors were funding propaganda against Dikio because the amnesty boss resisted pressure they mounted on him to pay them for jobs not done.

“Investigations revealed that contractors within PAP office were not delivering their jobs in accordance with their terms of contracts.

“These contractors want to be paid for laptops that were not supplied and others who supplied, delivered counterfeit products,” he said.

The source insisted that Dikio was determined to cleanse the system and no amount of propaganda would stop him from carrying out his reforms.

Some ex-agitators also corroborated the development describing persons behind blackmails against Dikio as disgruntled impersonators, who were hitherto syphoning the monthly stipends of the original beneficiaries of the programme.

They said those opposed were behind the padding of the amnesty payroll with duplicated names recently discovered in a probe ordered by Dikio to sanitise the system.

One of the ex-agitators, Magada Victor, a prominent member of the formerly dreaded camp five owned by Government Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tomplo, gave an insight into the identities of persons waging war against Dikio.

Victor said the names of some the original beneficiaries of PAP were shortchanged in 2009 and stipends had since been hijacked to the accounts of non-beneficiaries of the programme. (The Nation)