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By Amos Okioma, Yenagoa
Ex-agitators in Bayelsa State on Tuesday barricaded the liaison office of the Presidential Amnesty Programme demanding that the Bayelsa State coordinator, Esther Boro, “must go or no staff will be allowed to work in the office.”
The ex-agitators during a protest at the liaison office in Yenagoa, accused Esther Boro of working against their interest with regards to the cooperative programme implemented by the interim administrator, retired Major General Barry Tariye Ndiomu.
Speaking to journalists on behalf of others during the protest, the national chairman of Second Phase Ex-agitators, Olotu Waneni, and Elaye Slabo, secretary of 3rd Phase, said “there will be no peace in the Niger Delta if there is no peace in Bayelsa State.
According to Waneni and Slabo, Bayelsa is the headquarters of the Presidential Amnesty Programme despite the fact that the head office is in Abuja.
“Bayelsa is the origin and the pressure center.
“Our role model, Isaac Boro’s daughter Esther Boro is the one fighting against the success of the Presidential Amnesty cooperative programme. She is telling us, we the 30,000 delegates who are the owners of the programme, that we cannot be part of the process.
“We are not too sure if Esther Boro is the biological daughter of Isaac Boro. We are yet to carried out the DNA,” they said
Waneni and Slabo said “the only way for peace to reign is for Esther Boro to go,” adding that she should be transferred to the national headquarters and leave the Bayelsa liaison office alone.
“Esther Boro is always aggrieved with the ex-agitators. She is always arrogant to us, as we stand now, the office should remove her to go and work in the national level and bring somebody that can interface with us, so that we can have a free flow of our programme.
“Secondly the conditions to access the cooperative loans by Esther Boro are too stringent for us and that is why we said she must go. Apart from that, they can do this Amnesty Cooperative elsewhere and forget about Bayelsa.
“We have pipeline passing through our backyard, we can decide to vandalize them and the economy of nation will crumble,” they threatened
Other conditions they said include the Amnesty Cooperative programme should start without delay and all the stringent conditions are removed.
Reacting to the issued raised by the ex-agitators, the financial secretary of the Amnesty Cooperative Society, who is also the director of Mobilisation, Strategic Communications, Tonye Bobo, said he will relate their grievances to the interim administrator, retired Major General Barry Tariye Ndiomu for appropriate action.
Bobo asked for 48 hours for him to meet with his boss in order to resolve the matters amicably. “I promise you as an ex-agitator, delegate myself, we will not allow anybody to truncate or frustrate the good plans of Major General Ndiomu for the ex-agitators.
“He has good intentions for us and that is why some people are trying to back stab him”.
The ex-agitators comprised the 1st, 2nd and 3rd phases, who carried placards with different inscriptions such as, ‘Esther Boro is too pompous,’ ‘Esther Boro must go for the programme to have a head way,’ ‘We have passed a vote of no confidence on Esther Boro,’ ‘We object to the strenuous conditions of the cooperative programme,’ among others.
