Hazy Agenda, Multiple Interests: Stakeholders Engagement with the First Phase of the Niger Delta Amnesty Deal in Nigeria

Abstract

The oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria is bedeviled by revolutionary violence. The grouse of the militant youths in the region is that their communities are degraded by oil prospecting activities of and also that they get too little from the federation allocations from the oil wealth controlled by the federal government. Unable to defeat the militants militarily, the federal government in 2009 adopted an amnesty programme that offered the fighters life sustaining opportunities for dropping their guns. The policy was implemented in two phases: 1) the militants drop their guns and without any negotiation or legal framework for admittance of specific guilt get automatic amnesty and 2) those granted amnesty get rehabilitated and reintegrated into the society. This paper is on how different stakeholders in the Niger Delta engaged with the initiative. The paper focuses on five major stakeholders: the federal government which owned the amnesty programme; the Niger Delta Governors who were required to co-facilitate the weapons recovery in their respective states; the warlords under which the Niger Delta militant youths were organized; the political godfathers in the Niger Delta with whom many of the militant groups had working relationship and; the community leaders into whose communities the ex-militants would return into. In the absence of any legal framework for their working relationship, each of the stakeholders acted so selfishly that the amnesty programme today lacks sustainability. While the federal government used the policy to relatively increase Nigeria’s oil output, the others manipulated the process to oil their interests in winning the 2011 elections with the militants as key stakeholders. The amnesty programme divided the militants around selfish interests. Militancy is back to the region but not coordinated because the militants are now divided.