Transformational Strategy or Gilded Pacification? Four Years On: The Niger Delta Armed Conflict and the DDR Process of the Nigerian Amnesty Programme

• Published in: Journal of Asian and African studies (Leiden) Vol. 50; no. 4; pp. 387 - 411
• Main Author: Agbiboa, Daniel E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.08.2015; Sage Publications Ltd. (UK); SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Amnesties; Amnesty; Armed forces; Arms control & disarmament; Conflict; Conflict resolution; Disarmament; Killing; Negotiation, mediation and arbitration; Petroleum; Social aspects; Nigeria; Niger Delta; Demobilisation and Reintegration; armed conflict; multilayered causes; Niger Delta; Disarmament; amnesty
• ISSN: 0021-9096; 1745-2538
• DOI: 10.1177/0021909614530082

My central aim in this paper is to evaluate the outcomes of the amnesty programme established in mid-2009 by the Nigerian government as a way of resolving the groundswell of violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. In particular, I focus analytic attention on the planning and implementation of the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) process of the amnesty. I argue that while the amnesty promotes non-killing alternatives to conflict resolution and opens a door for stabilisation, its current planning and implementation is flawed and unable to reduce the long-term potential for armed conflict in the Niger Delta. Far from been a transformational strategy, I argue that the amnesty programme has become a strategy of gilded pacification essentially targeted at buying off militants and re-establishing oil and gas production in the Niger Delta without addressing the multilayered causes of peacelessness in the region.