BUDGET LINES ARE NOT STIPEND LINES: DR. DENNIS OTUARO VOLUNTEER MEDIA TEAM ANSWERS DISEIMOH'S CALL FOR DR. OTUARO'S REMOVAL

BUDGET LINES ARE NOT STIPEND LINES: DR. DENNIS OTUARO VOLUNTEER MEDIA TEAM ANSWERS DISEIMOH'S CALL FOR DR. OTUARO'S REMOVAL The attention of the Dr. Dennis Otuaro Volunteer Media Team has been drawn to an article titled "₦115bn Amnesty Budget, Same ₦65,000 Stipend: Diseimoh Explodes, Demands Tinubu Probe Otuaro And Sack Him." In it, Mr. Tare Diseimoh, speaking for what he calls concerned ex-agitators, demands a presidential probe of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), an investigation of its finances and the removal of its Administrator, Dr. Dennis Otuaro. The Team has tested every material allegation against the public record. In its considered view, none survives scrutiny. At the heart of the matter lies a comparison that sounds persuasive and proves nothing. Mr. Diseimoh sets a ₦115 billion budget beside a ₦65,000 stipend and invites the public to infer neglect. The Team argued that the conclusion simply does not follow from the premise. The 2026 allocation of ₦115 billion sits in the service-wide vote as a provision for the reintegration of transformed ex-militants, up from ₦65 billion in 2024 and 2025. The Phase II leadership has stated publicly that stipends were never part of what was presented to the National Assembly; the increase was captured for reintegration, empowerment, inclusivity and accommodation. A reintegration vote cannot be faulted for failing to do the work of an allowance. To measure one budget line by another is a category error, not an argument. Even if the stipend were the real grievance, the demand is addressed to the wrong office. Any change in the stipend rate is a major fiscal decision requiring the approval of the Presidency, the Ministry of Finance, the budget authorities and the National Assembly. The Team argued that an Administrator may propose, advocate and appeal, but he cannot appropriate. To demand otherwise is to require him to act beyond his legal authority. It is a settled principle of public administration that no officer can give what the law has not placed in his hands. The call to sack Dr. Otuaro over the stipend rate therefore has no legal or logical footing. The publication's own account of his position is instructive, and it amounts to an admission against Mr. Diseimoh's own case. It records that Dr. Otuaro describes the stipend as a transitional allowance, with the programme's weight shifting towards education, training, empowerment and reintegration. Mr. Diseimoh treats this as proof of neglect. The Team argued that it is the opposite: it restates the design of the programme, which is disarmament, demobilisation, rehabilitation and reintegration, in that sequence and towards a defined end. A programme that only pays allowances and never reintegrates has failed its mandate. Notably, the allowance itself has not stopped: disbursement records show at least ₦88.79 billion paid in monthly stipends between 2018 and mid-2026, including approved bulk payments for March, April and May 2026. The claim that "original beneficiaries have been abandoned" is a bare assertion, and the figures contradict it. In-country scholarship deployment rose from 3,800 in the 2024/2025 academic year to 3,900 in 2025/2026, with about 200 foreign scholarships in addition. The 2024/2025 deployment itself was raised from an initial 1,700 to 2,500 beneficiaries after Dr. Otuaro insisted on a transparent process. In 2026 alone, 243 postgraduate scholars have been deployed to United Kingdom universities for master's degrees in fields including cybersecurity, software engineering, oil and gas engineering, law, forensic audit and data science. Sixteen earlier offshore scholars have already graduated, four with distinctions. An administrator who abandons his people does not widen their access to the world's universities. Beyond the lecture hall, the evidence is just as concrete. PAP has trained four pilot cadets and two instrument-rating trainees in South Africa, 40 aviation cadets in Lagos and 98 maritime cadets in Delta State. In January 2026, it distributed 900 laptops to scholarship students in Nigerian universities. It has also trained 360 delegates from the three phases of the programme in alternative dispute resolution and mediation. The Dr. Dennis Otuaro Volunteer Media Team challenged the opponents of the Otuaro Administration to reconcile these facts with their claim of abandonment, noting that the article itself concedes that PAP publicises scholarships, vocational training and human-capital development. That concession is fatal to the thesis: the expanded funding is going precisely where Mr. Diseimoh says it is not. Perhaps the weakest limb of the case is the suggestion that PAP is becoming a "Gbaramatu Amnesty Programme." It is advanced as a question, not as a fact. It names no beneficiary, contract, scholarship or list, and cites no figure. The article admits that the claim is disputed and that ex-agitator leaders rejected the same insinuation in December 2025. The Team argued that the burden of proof lies on the person who makes an accusation, not on the person who is accused. Whoever alleges a pattern of sectional capture in a federal programme must produce the data: who received what, from where, under which criteria. Until Mr. Diseimoh does so, the claim remains a mere assertion resting on his word alone, and he should either substantiate it or withdraw it. On the demand for a probe of PAP's finances, the Team observes that Mr. Diseimoh cites no query, audit finding or document from Dr. Otuaro's tenure. The only adverse audit finding in the public domain, the Auditor-General's report on payments made without supporting documents, relates to 2020 and 2021. Dr. Otuaro was appointed in March 2024, three years afterwards. Responsibility for financial infractions attaches to the period and to the officers who controlled the funds, not to a successor who was not there. A probe is a lawful response to evidence, not a substitute for it. The programme's spending remains open to the Auditor-General, the National Assembly and the ordinary machinery of public-finance oversight, and the Team does not oppose proper scrutiny where facts warrant it. The allegation that the programme has been politicised is made without a date, an event, a statement or a naira. The Team argued that the record points the other way. In August 2025, Dr. Otuaro cautioned ex-agitators against desperate politicians seeking to use them against the federal government ahead of the 2027 elections. The recognised ex-agitator leaders of Phases One, Two and Three have since affirmed their loyalty to the programme, and the Akwa Ibom ex-agitators' forum has passed a vote of confidence in him and rejected calls for his removal. Mr. Diseimoh is entitled to his opinion, but his claim to speak for the beneficiaries as a whole cannot stand in the face of those leaders. In the final analysis, each material allegation fails on its own terms. The budget argument conflates two lines of expenditure, the stipend demand is directed at an officer without the power to grant it, the abandonment claim is contradicted by scholarship and training figures, and the Gbaramatu, financial-mismanagement and politicisation claims are unsupported by evidence. The Team does not pretend that the stipend question is closed. It is a legitimate matter of welfare policy, and it should be pursued through the Presidency and the National Assembly, where the power to resolve it lies. But the Niger Delta is poorly served by agitation that blurs budget lines, ignores the law on who approves what, and seeks the removal of a public officer without a single piece of evidence against him. The Dr. Dennis Otuaro Volunteer Media Team hereby serves notice on Mr. Tare Diseimoh to desist, forthwith, from rushing to the public with grave accusations that are unsupported by facts or evidence. Public office is not a fair target for sweeping allegations that cannot be proved, and the Niger Delta's fragile peace cannot be a stage for the recycling of rhetoric. The Team will not stand by while the reputation of a public officer, and the progress of a programme on which thousands of families and the region's stability depend, is assailed by claims that collapse on first contact with the public record. The Team reserves the right to take all such lawful steps as may be necessary to protect the integrity of the Administrator and the programme. The Team also urges the media to test every such claim against the verifiable record before giving it a platform, in keeping with the professional duty of accuracy. To the general public, the Team says plainly: disregard these baseless allegations. They offer noise in place of proof, and the figures and the record of Dr. Otuaro's stewardship answer them. Dr. Otuaro was appointed by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reintegrate, empower and educate the people of the Niger Delta, and he will keep doing so.