FG to begin clean up of oil spills in 3 weeks

dimeji akinloye

March 24, 2016 6:14 PM

President's aide said the skill acquisition programme is in partnership with the Innoson Group, manufactures of Innoson Vehicles .

Fishing communities in the Niger Delta badly hit by oil spills (This picture is for illustrative purposes).

The cleaning up of of oil spills in the

Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Niger Delta and Coordinator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Brig- General Paul Boroh (retd), disclosed this in Enugu on Wednesday, March 24, 2016.

“The clean up exercise will begin at Ogoni in three weeks time and progress to other parts of the Niger Delta region," he said.

"We have gone to visit the area to assess the level of damage and a lot of people from the region will be involved in the exercise,” he said, while describing the facilities at Innoson Kiara Academy as “fantastic.”

Boroh stated this at the commissioning of the Skills Acquisition and Training in Automobile Technology and Manufacturing of Plastics by about 200 former Niger Delta agitators under the sustainable reintegration programme in the Presidential Amnesty initiative.

According to him, the skill acquisition programme is in partnership with the Innoson Group, manufactures of Innoson Vehicles and Plastics Manufacturing Assembly Plant, Emene, Enugu State.

Speaking on the Amnesty Programme, Boroh said: “It has substantially achieved its core mandate of restoring peace and stabilizing the security in the Niger Delta region.

“Ex-militants have now been trained and graduated from formal and informal trainings. The programme is now at its critical stage of sustainable reintegration of beneficiaries who have been trained.

“Though conceived as a national response to security conditions in the Niger Delta between 2009 and 2011, it has been able to substantially meet its mandate and has been able, through its formal vocational programmes, trained approximately 17,000 beneficiaries in various skills and set up or employed more than 3,583 beneficiaries."

READ: Shell to pay N15bn to affected Niger Delta residents over oil spills

He noted that the process is still ongoing, adding that 1,040 will conclude their refreshers and set up their own business by the end of this quarter.

dimeji akinloye