An Analysis of the Amnesty Policy of Nigerian Government on Niger Delta Crisis

Abstract: Oil producing communities of Nigeria known as Niger Delta region has been a region characterized with fierce violent conflict for more than a decade. The conflict is between successive Nigerian Governments and their collaborating oil companies, and militant groups from the region. And the core issues in the conflict are the socio-economic deprivations and denial of resource control which were occasioned by corporate malfeasance and indifference of successive Nigerian Governments to the plight, demands and aspirations of the people of the region. The Nigerian Government who first aggravated the violent conflict in the region through the use of violent repression as an anti-protest measure however proposed an amnesty policy in June 2009 as a non-violent measure to address the crisis in the region. The policy aimed solely at disarming, rehabilitating and reintegrating the militants into the Nigerian state. The implementation of the policy brought a relative peace to the long troubled region for the first time, with the seeming compliance of the militants. This study however argues that the policy has no feasibility of ensuring a genuine and lasting peace in the long troubled region because its focus is not on the root cause of the crisis. Thus it argues that addressing the issue of human rights whose lack is the root cause of the crisis and whose provision has always been demands and the aspirations of the people will instead engender a genuine and lasting peace in the region.