Amnesty Policy: Temporal Salvation in the Niger-Delta

Abstract

After years of neglects, late President Yar'Adua eventually came up with a step of redressing the social problems amidst the Deltans. He introduced a five years amnesty program starting from year 2009 through 2014 with the aim of alleviating poverty, stopping deprivation and also to control crime as well as re-integrate and rehabilitate militants within the environment. Amnesty policy has paved ways for the Niger delta militant such that a lot of them benefited through vocational training as well as scholarships for studies abroad. Even those who were not militants declared themselves as one just to have a share of the amnesty package from the government. This in a way shows how underdevelopment and deprivation has made the Deltans take to violence and criminality as a way of life. In the country today, it seems the amnesty program produced peace in the Niger-Delta, but the question is: is it a relative peace or a lasting one? Hence this paper argues that amnesty policy is just a temporal tool of salvation for the militants. This study therefore focuses on the question whether the root causes of the conflict have been addressed by the policy. The methodology adopted for this work is precisely survey derived from secondary data like academic articles, books and newspapers on Niger-Delta crisis and various government approaches in resolving it. The finding of this study reveals that the Niger-Deltans are enjoying a temporal peaceful atmosphere because the electioneering process is yet to start which is apt to breed political thugs with ammunitions and all sort of deadly weapons thus enhancing new trend of criminality in the environs.