Demobilization or Remobilization? The Amnesty Program and the Search for Peace in the Niger Delta

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ABSTRACT This paper critically analyzes Nigeria's Amnesty Program and raises questions about its prospects for achieving sustainable peace in the Niger Delta. Since the 1990s, disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs have been a core component of the peace-building model used by the United Nations and other institutions. A disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration program is typically adopted as a means of transition from conflict to peace since its function is to remove one or more of the disputing parties from the scene. Accordingly, peace negotiations generally include disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration clauses, yet in peace-building theory, a disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration program is expected to comprise only the preliminary phases of a much broader process of addressing root causes that initially motivated the combatants. By failing to include the latter, the Amnesty Program does not conform to this model and therefore raises doubts about its efficacy. By unpacking the notion of amnesty, the Amnesty Program's weakness may be identified. The strategy for conflict resolution in the region centers on amnesty from prosecution and fails to incorporate a deeper strategy of peace building. By presenting amnesty as a beneficent gift to Delta militants, the state seeks to reinforce its claims to exclusive legitimacy and sovereignty. Additionally, the legalistic nature of the Amnesty Program reflects the state's effort to criminalize the militants, thereby sidestepping their claims of grievances, many of which are shared by the general population. The construction of amnesty as the state's gift to criminals is the major challenge to a durable peace because the state ignores the local population's widely shared grievances and fails to address the structural violence in which militancy germinates. The program may be considered a manifestation of the state's integrated win/lose approach to insurgency in the region, thereby suggesting the need for a third-party intervention to bring a fresh, more consensual, and hopefully more promising peace process.