Oliver Unabia

A Dying Ecology and a Saving Policy: an Insight on the Amnesty Policy of Nigerian Government on Niger Delta Crisis Oliver Unabia

Niger Delta is a region characterized with fierce violent conflict for more than a decade now. The conflict is between successive Nigerian Governments and their collaborating oil companies, and militant groups from the region. And the core issues in the conflict are the socio-economic deprivations and denial of resource control which were occasioned by corporate malfeasance and indifference of successive Nigerian Governments to the plight, demands and aspirations of the people of the region. The Nigerian Government however proposed an amnesty policy in June 2009 as a non-violent measure to address the crisis in the region. This study throws an insight on the policy and argues that the policy which aims solely on disarming and integrating the militants into the society has no feasibility of ensuring a genuine and lasting peace in the long troubled region. This is because its focus is not on the root cause of the crisis. Thus it argues that addressing the issue of human rights whose lack is the root cause of the crisis and whose provision has always been the demands and the aspirations of the people will instead engender a genuine and lasting peace in the region.