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

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.