Winning the War, Losing the Peace: Amnesty and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peace-Building in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

Abstract

The amnesty granted to the Niger Delta militants by the Nigerian state has stopped active and sustained physical combat in the oil-rich but volatile region. Yet, peace remains elusive in the area. This article, which relies essentially on secondary sources of data, examines this ‘no war, no peace’ situation by mapping the challenges confronting the amnesty programme and its corollary disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes. It is argued that, until the incentives for violence are identified and checked, the age-long grievances of the region against environmental insecurity, underdevelopment, and distributional injustice in oil rents addressed, perpetrators of human rights violations – including extra-judicial murders – brought to book, and victims of human rights abuses and the protracted conflict compensated, the current peace of the graveyard in the region is likely to subsist.