| Summary/Abstract |
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.
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