The Special Adviser to the President on Nigeria Delta and Chairman, Presidential Amnesty Committee, Mr. Kingsley Kuku, has directed the withdrawal of six students under sponsorship of the Amnesty Programme over a violent attack on the Nigerian Mission in Russia on Monday.
Kuku took the decision to withdraw the scholarship of the affected students after realising that the attack on the embassy was unprovoked.
Kuku said in a statement signed by the Head of Media and Communications in the Amnesty Office, Mr. Daniel Alabrah, on Wednesday that the affected students breached the code of conduct signed by the Amnesty delegates on scholarship before their departure from the country.
“Following Monday’s attack on the Nigerian Embassy in Moscow, the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta has decided to withdraw the sponsorship of six of its student-delegates at the Peoples Friendship University, Moscow, Russia, that were found to be behind the condemnable act,” the statement read in part.
The President’s Aide, who described the action of the students as gross misconduct, stressed that it was wrong and unacceptable for students being sponsored by the Nigerian government to embark on acts inimical to the image of the nation in a foreign country.
He said that the claim by the students, who attacked the Nigerian Embassy in Russia that they were being owed six months of in-training allowance, was a lie as they were being owed only the month of September which according to him was being processed by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
He said that the Amnesty Office, which had communicated the delegates about the ongoing efforts of the CBN to pay the September allowances, was shocked to hear that they went on the rampage attacking and destroying things at the nation’s mission in Russia.
The statement added that 24 delegates of the Amnesty Office were studying in Russia under a special scholarship scheme for youths in the Niger Delta out of which Russian police were said to have arrested 16.
Kuku also debunked a claim in some quarters that Amnesty Office was making arrangement to pay former agitators under the programme the sum of N2 million each.
He said that the rumour had caused tension in the region with people making several telephone calls to his office to confirm the claim.
“There is no such plan to pay any of them such amount,” Kuku added.
