Amnesty and the Niger Delta Conflict. Effects and Solutions According to the Conflict Transformation Theory

Master's Thesis from the year 2021 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 8.5, University of Port Harcourt, course: Master's in Conflict and Security Studies, language: English, abstract: The paper is about amnesty, the Niger delta conflict and the conceptual Framework like the concept of amnesty and the concept of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration. The research examined the impact of the Federal Government's 2009 Amnesty programme for ex-militants in the Niger Delta. The focus was on security, and development in the region; it also focused on oil pipeline vandalism. The study made use of the Conflict Transformation theory. The central thesis of conflict transformation theory is that contemporary violent conflicts require interventions than transcend more than a mere change of position and the identification of win-win outcomes. The study utilized mainly qualitative methods - the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) and In-Depth Interviews (IDI). Secondary sources of data collection such as journals, articles, books government publication, internet articles and newspapers were also utilized; the data were descriptively analysed. The sampling technique employed for the study was the purposive sampling to select the audience for the FGDs and IDIs. The findings revealed that the amnesty programme was able to address the security problem in the region to enable government to successfully carry out oil exploration and increase the nations earning from oil production. The findings also revealed that issues relating to governance and development in the region are still a fundamental problem in need of dire solutions. The research recommends the following: The federal government should push for restructured Nigeria. The federal government should look into ways to improving on the present programme on Niger Delta; oil cooperation's must be made to participate in providing basic amenities in the Region; the federal government must prioritize the clean -up of the region due to continuous oil spill and pollution in the environment.