I have been conducting research in the Niger Delta for the past 20 years, and my latest trip there in early 2018 found ample evidence that the amnesty hasn’t worked as planned. Then-President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua introduced the Presidential Amnesty Program, (PAP) or the Niger Delta Amnesty Program (NDAP), as a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration program to answer to the increasing violence throughout the prior decade, which intensified after Ogoni environmental rights’ activist Ken Saro Wiwa was executed by a military tribunal in 1995. Approximately 30,000 people in the Niger Delta enrolled in the PAP as ex-militants. The Niger Delta Avengers, Red Scorpions and the Niger Delta Greenland Justice Movement all rose in 2016, attacking the Forcados pipeline installations in the western Niger Delta, causing national production to plummet to a 30-year low at 1.1 million barrels per day. Despite the decreased hostilities ushered in by the amnesty, Niger Deltans report that since the inception of the amnesty, the federal government’s military presence has broadened rather than diminished.

Source: Forbes March 20, 2018 15:33 UTC