A group comprising 183 former Niger Delta agitators has initiated legal action against the Federal Government, alleging the abrupt cessation of their monthly allowances under the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP). Led by counsel Regina Okotie-Eboh, the ex-militants filed 17 separate lawsuits before Justice James Omotosho, with the coordinator of the PAP also named as a respondent.<\/p>\n
In one of the lawsuits, ex-agitator Benneth Ofeyena sought a declaration affirming his entitlement to a monthly stipend of N65,000 as a Phase 2 beneficiary of the PAP. He further demanded payment of outstanding allowances from October 2012 to April 2023, totaling N8,255,000, and requested the continuation of payments from May 2023 onwards. Additionally, Ofeyena sought N5 million from the defendants to cover legal fees incurred.<\/p>\n
Similar suits were filed by other former militants who are beneficiaries of the amnesty program initiated in 2009 by President Umaru Yar\u2019Adua. These legal actions underscore the frustration and financial hardship experienced by the ex-agitators due to the abrupt halt in payments, despite yearly budget allocations exceeding N60 billion for the amnesty program.<\/p>\n
During court proceedings, Ofeyena testified as the sole plaintiff, with Justice Omotosho admitting relevant documents as evidence. The judge adjourned the case until May 6 to allow the defense to present their case and respond to the allegations raised by the former agitators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A group comprising 183 former Niger Delta agitators has initiated legal action against the Federal Government, alleging the abrupt cessation of their monthly allowances under the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP). Led by counsel Regina Okotie-Eboh, the ex-militants filed 17 separate lawsuits before Justice James Omotosho, with the coordinator of the PAP also named as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":23584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-23583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23583"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23593,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23583\/revisions\/23593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}