Seven pardoned prisoners get N1m each from Obiano

Seven out of the total 24 inmates granted amnesty last year by Governor Willie Obiano have received cheques for one million naira each as promised by the governor.

Governor Willie Obiano made the presentation at the Professor Dora Akunyili Women Development Centre, Awka.

The 24 inmates who were granted amnesty by the governor during his visit last year to prisons in the state as part of activities marking the country’s 55th Independence Anniversary celebrations had embarked on six months training on vocational skills and how to reintegrate back into the society.

However, only seven persons, six males and a female followed through the training and reintegration process and were trained in specific areas including Plumbing, Paintmaking, Painting, Hairdressing, shoe making, Panel beating and tiling.

They include Messres Obumneme Okafor from Ekwulobia, Chidiebere Udeh from Uwani Amokwe, Enugu State, Faith Nweke from Umunze and Philemon Daniel from Kaduna.

Others include Emeka Olisa from Aguluzigbo and Mahadi Yusuf and Innocent Okeke from Zamfara State and Agulu respectively.

Presenting the Cheques, Governor Obiano who was represented at the ceremony by the Commissioner for Social Welfare, Children and Women’s Affairs, who acknowledged that it may be hard for them to resettle, explained that the gesture was to give the freed inmates hope to enable them reintegrate back into the society.

He revealed that the Ministry of Social Welfare, Children and Women’s Affairs had followed through the training program organized for them and ensured that they are actually repentant of whatever brought them into incarceration and are ready to make meaningful use of their lives.

The governor noted that through the documentation process which they embarked on, the persons will be monitored from time to time to ensure that they remain on cause, and urged them to utilize the opportunity to piece together the broken pieces of their lives and to avoid engaging in any act that will take them back to the Prisons.

Speaking after receiving the cheques, some of the beneficiaries whose joys knew no bounds including Messres Innocent Okeke, Chidiebere Udeh, Philemon Daniel, Faith Nweke and Mahadi Yusuf thanked the governor for his kind disposition towards them and prayed God to reward him immensely.

They pledged to utilize the money to pursue their dreams in the specific vocational areas and to be role models in the society, urging inmates who share the same fate as theirs not to give up but to trust in God for their own miracle.
The individuals were also during the ceremony taken through sessions of admonition by correctional officers in the Social Welfare Ministry.