Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region: Oil Insurgency and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict) 3030863263, 9783030863265

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN COMPROMISE AFTER CONFLICT

Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region Oil Insurgency and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Obasesam Okoi

Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict

Series Editor John D. Brewer, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

This series aims to bring together in one series scholars from around the world who are researching the dynamics of post-conflict transformation in societies emerging from communal conflict and collective violence. The series welcomes studies of particular transitional societies emerging from conflict, comparative work that is cross-national, and theoretical and conceptual contributions that focus on some of the key processes in post-conflict transformation. The series is purposely interdisciplinary and addresses the range of issues involved in compromise, reconciliation and societal healing. It focuses on interpersonal and institutional questions, and the connections between them.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14641

Obasesam Okoi

Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region Oil Insurgency and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

Obasesam Okoi Department of Justice and Society Studies University of St. Thomas Saint Paul, MN, USA

Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict ISBN 978-3-030-86326-5 ISBN 978-3-030-86327-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Contributor: Powderkeg Stock/Alamy This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated to the memory of my father, Fidelis Okoi Igbor

Series Editor’s Preface

Compromise is a much used but little understood term. There is a sense in which it describes a set of feelings (the so-called spirit of compromise) that involve reciprocity, representing the agreement to make mutual concessions toward each other from now on: No matter what we did to each other in the past, we will act toward each other in the future differently as set out in the agreement between us. The compromise settlement can be a spit and a handshake, much beloved in folklore, or a legally binding statute with hundreds of clauses. As such, it is clear that compromise enters into conflict transformation at two distinct phases. The first is during the conflict resolution process itself, where compromise represents a willingness among parties to negotiate a peace agreement that represents a second-best preference in which they give up their first preference (victory) in order to cut a deal. A great deal of literature has been produced in Peace Studies and International Relations on the dynamics of the negotiation process and the institutional and governance structures necessary to consolidate the agreement afterward. Just as important, however, is compromise in the second phase, when compromise is part of post-conflict reconstruction,

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in which protagonists come to learn to live together despite their former enmity and in face of the atrocities perpetrated during the conflict itself. In the first phase, compromise describes reciprocal agreements between parties to the negotiations in order to make political concessions sufficient to end conflict, in the second phase, compromise involves victims and perpetrators developing ways of living together in which concessions are made as part of shared social life. The first is about compromises between political groups and the state in the process of statebuilding (or re-building) after the political upheavals of communal conflict, the second is about compromises between individuals and communities in the process of social healing after the cultural trauma provoked by the conflict. This book Series primarily concerns itself with the second process, the often messy and difficult job of reconciliation, restoration, and repair in social and cultural relations following communal conflict. Communal conflicts and civil wars tend to suffer from the narcissism of minor differences, to coin Freud’s phrase, leaving little to be split halfway and compromise on, and thus are usually especially bitter. The Series therefore addresses itself to the meaning, manufacture, and management of compromise in one of its most difficult settings. The book Series is crossnational and cross-disciplinary, with attention paid to inter-personal reconciliation at the level of everyday life, as well as culturally between social groups, and the many sorts of institutional, inter-personal, psychological, sociological, anthropological, and cultural factors that assist and inhibit societal healing in all post-conflict societies, historically and in the present. It focuses on what compromise means when people have to come to terms with past enmity and the memories of the conflict itself, and relate to former protagonists in ways that consolidate the wider political agreement. This sort of focus has special resonance and significance, for peace agreements are usually very fragile. Societies emerging out of conflict are subject to ongoing violence from spoiler groups who are reluctant to give up on first preferences, constant threats from the outbreak of renewed violence, institutional instability, weakened economies, and a wealth of problems around transitional justice, memory, truth recovery,

Series Editor’s Preface

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and victimhood, among others. Not surprisingly, therefore, reconciliation and healing in social and cultural relations are difficult to achieve, not least because inter-personal compromise between erstwhile enemies is difficult. Lay discourse picks up on the ambivalent nature of compromise after conflict. It is talked about in common sense in one of two ways, in which compromise is either a virtue or a vice, taking its place among the angels or in Hades. One form of lay discourse likens concessions to former protagonists with the idea of restoration of broken relationships and societal and cultural reconciliation, in which there is a sense of becoming (or returning) to wholeness and completeness. The other form of lay discourse invokes ideas of appeasement, of being compromised by the concessions, which constitute a form of surrender and reproduce (or disguise) continued brokenness and division. People feel they continue to be beaten by the sticks which the concessions have allowed others to keep; with restoration, however, weapons are turned truly in plowshares. Lay discourse suggests, therefore, that these are issues that the Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict Series must begin to problematize, so that the process of societal healing is better understood and can be assisted and facilitated by public policy and intervention. This latest addition to the Series focuses on peacebuilding following the conflict in Nigeria’s oil region. It adds yet another country to those covered in the Series. It is a fascinating case in its own right, skillfully and logically analyzed by Okoi Obasesam, but it highlights issues central to the Series. It continues the interest which the Series has on the transition from violence to peace among ex-combatants (ex-insurgents as the author calls them). Ex-combatants constitute one of several key constituencies in the compromise process, along with victims and the state, all of which feature in the Series. The author’s in-depth interviews with ex-insurgents provide a fascinating insight into why they went to war: mostly for reasons of poverty and social injustice. The volume also draws attention to perhaps the two principal key themes of the Series, which is the importance of inter-personal change in social relations after conflict (which the Series calls compromise in the social peace process), and the necessity to ensure conflict transformation

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is linked with social transformation to realize social justice. This implicates the importance of power and the state in assisting compromise, reconciliation, and societal healing. The manuscript also very skilfully deconstructs top-down policies and ideas—like the meaning of DDR and the meaning of peace—to engage critically with liberal notions of peacebuilding by emphasizing the importance of local knowledge that shapes how these processes are experienced locally on the ground, a strong theme in many other volumes in the Series. Finally, like many other volumes in the Series, there is engagement with theory. A fascinating and detailed case study of Nigeria’s oil-region conflict is used to engage with wider theoretical and conceptual ideas. This is done in two ways: by illuminating existing theoretical ideas (notably Galtung’s notion of positive peace and Lederach’s formulation of conflict transformation); and by developing new concepts that are grounded in the case study, in this case the idea of punctuated peace. The notion that peace processes oscillate, going forward and seemingly backward, being punctuated in their progress, applies very well outside of Nigeria; indeed, outside Africa, notably Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Sri Lanka, countries which feature strongly in this Series. One of the most compelling features of Obasesam’s case study is its honest depiction of the failures in the peace process, offering lessons that other cases should avoid. Learning what to do, and what not to do, is what makes comparative studies of peace processes interesting and relevant. The book argues that the failure of peacebuilders to address the structural inequalities and social injustices that provoked the insurgency, revived the violence, punctuating the progression toward peace. The author’s analysis shows how militants were transformed into economic entrepreneurs through skills training, education, monthly monetary allowances, and entrepreneurship opportunities, which, while praiseworthy, made violence a lucrative rational means-end, and facilitated corruption, exclusion, and marginalization. It is on the basis of these failures that the author closes by making several important policy recommendations for positive peacebuilding in Nigeria’s oil region that are relevant elsewhere.

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For all these reasons, this is a very valuable addition to the Series, and as Series Editor I warmly endorse this volume. Belfast, UK July 2021

John D. Brewer

Acknowledgments

The ideas that fill the pages of this book did not originate in a vacuum. They developed out of a series of intellectual trainings, conversations with mentors and friends, and constructive criticisms received at conferences and workshops. I could never have explored these depths without the guidance and support of many individuals and organizations to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. I would like to express my gratitude to the long list of scholars who have influenced my thinking. Hamdesa Tuso, Eliakim Sibanda, Uwafiokun Idemudia, and Fabiana Li have provided guidance and encouragement throughout the various stages of this project and continue to serve as intellectual mentors. Their constructive comments and invaluable insights helped me to think through many theoretical standpoints and eliminate conceptual ambiguities while developing this project. Michael Watts of the University of California, Berkeley, served as my external advisor. His thoughtful and constructive comments have been quite helpful. Sean Byrne provided encouragement along the way, and I’ve benefitted immensely from his scholarship. I have also had many fruitful discussions about the topic of this book at local and international conferences and benefitted from feedback after presentations at the biennial meeting of the International Peace Research xiii

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Acknowledgments

Association, the regional and general conferences of the International Studies Association, as well as workshops organized by the Canadian International Council. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers at Palgrave Macmillan for their excellent and insightful comments that helped refine my thinking. The editorial team at Palgrave, including Josie Taylor, Shreenidhi Natarajan, and Liam Inscoe-Jones, have been very helpful in guiding this book to press. Thanks also to the series editor of Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, John Brewer for his constructive comments on the manuscript. Thanks also to others who have provided invaluable input and support throughout the various stages of this project: Margaret Abazie Humphrey, Pius Ughakpoteni, Joseph Agbaji, Comfort Ejukwa, Office of the Paramount Ruler of Ibeno, and Consultants at the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta. Benjamin Maiangwa, Marrion Kiprop, Sani Murtala, Peter Genger, Oluchi Ogbu, Ade Mohammed, Mathias Ateng, and Stephanie Patrick have provided intellectual support along the way. This book could not have been completed without financial support received from a variety of sources. The fieldwork was funded through the Janice C. Filmon Award in Peace Studies and the Berdie and Irvin Cohen Award in Peace and Conflict Studies. I was honored to be the 2016–2017 winner of the Naylah Ayed Prize for Leadership and Global Citizenship and the financial award contributed to my field research. Travel grants from the International Studies Association enabled me to present earlier drafts of this projects at two international conferences in Maryland, USA, and Toronto, Canada. Of course, I could not have completed this book without the support of my family. Tatenda Okoi has been an intellectual companion and a constant source of inspiration throughout this journey. Her prayers, perseverance, and quiet sacrifices have been immeasurably supportive. I could never soar to this height without her support. Thanks to my boys, Daniel Jesam Okoi and Myles Kebesoba Okoi; your understanding and love gives me purpose each day. I hope you will be proud reading this book.

About This Book

This book examines the extent to which peacebuilding processes such as disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration are possible in the attempt to demilitarize Nigeria’s oil region and establish a stable postconflict environment for nurturing durable peace. The book argues that the failure of the peacebuilders to address the structural tensions at the heart of insurgency, along with competition for access to the material benefits of peacebuilding, have revived violence at repeated intervals that punctuate the progression of peace. The author’s analysis shows how the interventions pursued by peacebuilders have been successful in stabilizing the oil region by taking arms from insurgents, paying them monthly allowances, and building their capacity to reintegrate into society through a range of transformational processes. While these interventions are praiseworthy, they have transformed the political realities of peacebuilding into an economic enterprise that makes recourse to violence a lucrative endeavor as identity groups frequently mobilize insurgency targeting oil infrastructure to compel the state to enter into

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About This Book

negotiations with them. There was little consideration for the impact corruption might have on the peacebuilding process. As corruption becomes entrenched, it fosters exclusion and anger, leading to further conflict. The book proposes pathways to positive peacebuilding in Nigeria’s oil region.

Prologue

This book emerged over time, beginning with my experience working as a young engineering graduate in Nigeria. But it tells a more complicated story than the one I had conjured up in my head prior to undertaking field research for my doctoral dissertation. I had just graduated from engineering school in 2001, and I was awaiting my deployment for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) program, which engages young graduates in the nation-building process. I decided to move to Port Harcourt city in search of an internship opportunity. At the time, my dream was to pursue a career in the oil and gas industry, and I needed to build my work experience through an internship. It was advisable that I move to Port Harcourt city if I was going to bring that dream to fruition. It was not until I began to approach the energy corporations for internship opportunities and saw that most leave signposts on their entrance gates with the inscription “No Vacancy” did I fully realize the difficulty in securing a job in the oil industry. As I continued to network around the city, I met dozens of engineering graduates working as security guards, drivers, and cooks to migrant oil workers. The unemployment challenge deepens for those young people with limited education.

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One morning I stood on Trans-Amadi Industrial Layout overlooking Schlumberger Dowell—the world’s leading engineering company providing services to the oil and gas industry in drilling, reservoir characterization, production, and processing. It was a beautiful morning. The blue sky and brilliant sunshine made me recall a day at the beach with my college friends. The highway, which was dominated by vehicular traffic in each lane, left no space for pedestrians. I could hear the whistling sounds from air leaking across damaged automobile caskets as they drove past me. Traffic jams, noise, and air pollution were commonplace. For more than an hour, the stench of oil assailed my nostrils. The contradiction of industrial expansion and population growth in the oil city was one of those contrasts waiting to be discovered. Suddenly, a steady drizzle fell on the streets and lessened the pervasive stench of industrial waste. A few minutes later, the drizzle subsided. As I crossed to the other side of the highway—a few meters away from the premises of Schlumberger Dowell—I sighted a gentleman loading digital theodolites onto a white Hilux truck. The electronic features of the digital theodolites brought back memories of my experiential learning activities in engineering school. I introduced myself and offered to assist in loading the equipment onto the truck, which was the best I could do at the time in terms of networking for internship opportunities. He introduced himself as Elechi, the technical director of an engineering company contracted by one of the oil multinationals to survey its Oil Mining Locations (OML). Despite his high-profile status in the oil industry, he presented himself with humility, and I found him very approachable. As such, he paid careful attention to our conversation even though we were meeting for the first time and under strange circumstances. He soon realized through our conversation that I studied civil engineering and had experience working with electronic digital theodolites. Little did I know our conversation would lead to a lifetransforming experience and possibly define my career trajectory many years later. Further, I had no inkling that the conversation, which seemed casual at the time, would turn out to be a job interview. Right there, I got an internship offer. My dream of pursuing an internship in the oil industry began to come alive. He handed me his business card and asked me to report to his office in two days.

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I went to work as instructed. After an orientation to the work environment, my first assignment was to travel with the company’s technical team to Obagi oilfields to conduct As-built and Detail Survey (the recovery of original topographic survey details) around specific OML belonging to Elf Petroleum Nigeria Limited (EPNL), now Total E&P Nigeria Limited. We embarked on our journey and traveled at least thirty kilometers on the highway before negotiating the road leading to the Obagi community. My first experience was the discomfort of driving down a dusty access road, badly marred by dangerous potholes, which made the journey somewhat unpleasant. On arrival in Obagi, I glimpsed thatched houses located along pipelines routes, a few meters away from oil flow stations emitting hydrocarbon gases into the atmosphere, endangering the environment and public health. With no good roads, clean water sources, hospitals, and schools, Obagi reflected the complexity of life in the oil region, which mirrored the contrasting experiences of Nigerian society. Throughout my stay in Obagi, I was appalled by the pervasive sense of hopelessness in the community, the tyranny of oil multinationals, and the government’s inability to improve human conditions. The experience put a humane face on the reality that communities like Obagi have been sadly neglected, despite being the source of Nigeria’s oil wealth. A few months after completing my internship, I deployed for the NYSC program, which lasted for one year. During my service year, I worked as a Project Engineer overseeing the implementation of rural infrastructure in remote communities across Niger State. After the successful completion of the national service program in December 2002, I started a new job as a Site Engineer with SAIL—an engineering company contracted by Addax Petroleum Nigeria Limited (APNL) to rehabilitate its underwater facilities at the Calabar logistics base. The Addax base in Calabar was home to several oil-servicing companies including Halliburton Energy Corporation—all working to facilitate APNL’s offshore-onshore operations. My job was to oversee the implementation of SAIL’s multi-million dollar underwater construction projects at Addax base. Every morning I would see Halliburton workers discharging chemical pollutants from their gas tanks into the

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Calabar river, undermining the health and well-being of coastal communities who depend on the river as a primary source for fishing, drinking, and cooking. At any given moment, I saw dead fish floating on the river, an indication of the severity of pollution from Halliburton’s gas tanks. Despite the strong campaign on Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE), APNL was unable to enforce stringent environmental regulations to ensure its contractors were not engaging in environmentally harmful practices. My employment with SAIL coincided with the emergence of notorious insurgent groups in the oil region who perpetrated criminal atrocities ranging from attacks on critical infrastructure to the kidnapping of migrant workers that forced oil multinationals to begin securing their offshore platforms. Several times I saw APNL mobilizing armed military personnel offshore but did not quite understand the severity of the problem. By the time my contract with SAIL ended in early 2015, I had experienced an intellectual awakening that reinforced my desire and interest in the complex challenges inherent in Nigeria’s oil region. Inspired by my experience, I saw an opportunity to make a more significant contribution to humanity by pursuing scholarship on a subject that ignites my passion the most and would give me intellectual satisfaction and the fulfillment of becoming a contributor to knowledge through peace and conflict research and the greater personal rewards of learning and discovery. My return to Nigeria as a doctoral researcher seeking to explore the peacebuilding program initiated by the government to tackle the oil insurgency was a fascinating experience. I had the opportunity to interact with hundreds of former insurgents and gained important insight from the stories they shared about their experiences in the insurgency and in the peacebuilding process. What I discovered as my interactions with the various actors got more frequent was that, although the government achieved some success in stabilizing the oil region, and steps to improve peacebuilding were ongoing, the nature of peace was contentious. Despite the investment of resources in the peace process, the anticipated peace has yet to materialize. Rather, the lofty ambitions of the peacebuilding program resulted in temporary success, punctuated by the revival of insurgency at repeated intervals due to unresolved

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contradictions. This book points to the ways the design and implementation of peacebuilding processes institutionalized patterns of corruption, exclusion, and marginalization, creating conditions that make recourse to violence a lucrative endeavor. This book is both timely and important as it focuses on an understudied and less theorized facet of the Niger Delta problem. The importance of this book lies in the way it interrogates the nature of peace in the oil region conceptually and empirically while providing a rigorous analysis that is rooted in the conflict transformation literature to gain a nuanced understanding of the intricacies of peacebuilding while also developing pathways for positive peacebuilding. St. Paul, Minnesota, USA July 2021

Obasesam Okoi

Contents

1

Introduction: The Peacebuilding Universe in Nigeria’s Oil Region

Part I

The Transition from Conflict to Peace

2 Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding 3 4

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Measuring Success in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Processes

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Empowerment and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

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Part II

The Collapse and Revival of the Niger Delta Peace Process

5 The Changing Landscape of Oil Insurgency

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6 The Emergence of a Peace Economy

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Part III

Conceptualizing and Theorizing Peace

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Conceptions of Peace in the Niger Delta

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8 Towards a Theory of Punctuated Peace

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Pathways to Positive Peacebuilding

Index

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About the Author

Obasesam Okoi is Assistant Professor of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St Thomas, Minnesota, USA.

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Abbreviations

APNL DDR EPNL FAO FARC HSE IPOB IYC LTTE MEND NAC NDA NDBDA NDDB NDDC NDPVF NDTCR NDVF NDVS NSRP

Addax Petroleum Nigeria Limited Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Elf Petroleum Nigeria Limited Food and Agriculture Organization Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Health, Safety, and Environment Indigenous Peoples of Biafra Ijaw Youth Council Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta National African Company Niger Delta Avengers Niger Delta Basin Development Authority Niger Delta Development Board Niger Delta Development Commission Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force Niger Delta Technical Committee Report Niger Delta Volunteer Force Niger Delta Volunteer Service Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Program

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NYSC OML OMPADEC OSAPND PACS PAP RNC RUF UAC UAE UNDP UNITA USAID

Abbreviations

National Youth Service Corps Oil Mining Locations Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Peace and Conflict Studies Presidential Amnesty Program Royal Niger Company Revolutionary United Front United African Company United Arab Emirates United Nations Development Program National Union for the Total Independence of Angola United States Agency for International Development

List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

3.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 8.1

A A A A A

model model model model model

of transformative peacebuilding of conflict escalation in the Niger Delta of conflict re-escalation in the Niger Delta showing the trajectory of future insurgency of punctuated peace

34 82 87 91 140

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1 Introduction: The Peacebuilding Universe in Nigeria’s Oil Region

In 2017, I landed in Nigeria to examine firsthand that country’s efforts to address the insurgency that ravaged its petroleum industry and sent the oil economy into a tailspin. Before embarking on my journey, the news filtering out was that peace had been restored in the oil region after the federal government offered an amnesty to insurgents in 2009 and subsequently put into place a disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) program to address the causes of insurgency and instill an enduring peace across the region. As I traveled across the oil region, talking to ex-insurgents and community leaders while observing the postconflict environment in general, I realized that crime and violence—the two risk factors commonly associated with the activities of insurgents— were not the greatest security threat. Rather, a greater proportion of the population in the oil region find their lives shortened by structural forms of insecurity. The pervasive sense of hopelessness that I experienced in the coastal communities posed some provocative questions in my mind concerning the nature of peace in the oil region. One urgent question that needs to be addressed is why the peacebuilding program failed to lay a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 O. Okoi, Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2_1

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strong foundation for sustainable peace despite the significant investment of material resources in DDR activities. My first discovery in the field was the theoretical disconnect between the peacebuilders and the ex-insurgents concerning their understandings of peace, as well as their worldviews and expectations. Although the federal government has achieved tremendous success in stabilizing the oil region and steps to improve peacebuilding are ongoing, the nature of peace is contentious. The main challenge, I discovered, lies in the depoliticization of peacebuilding that produced a contested notion of peace in the oil region. The peacebuilders perceptions of peace were in contrast with the perceptions of the ex-insurgents. The dynamics of peacebuilding unfolded during my visit to Rivers State where I met Eze, an ex-insurgent from the Isiokpo community whose profile appeared in the official publication of the Presidential Amnesty Program. The publication profiled Eze as one of the success stories of the peacebuilding program as he had been “empowered” with a poultry farm. In Nigeria’s peacebuilding parlance, the term “empowerment” has a different connotation and is usually associated with reintegration assistance to ex-insurgents. An ex-insurgent is presumably “empowered” after receiving some reintegration benefits to assist in their pursuit of employment or an entrepreneurial endeavor. While in the Isiokpo community, Eze gave me a tour of what is presumably a failed poultry farm and told me, “You are the first person who has come to inquire about my empowerment.” In the peacebuilders’ worldview, Eze had been reintegrated economically after his empowerment with a poultry farm. But throughout my conversation with Eze, he sounded like a wounded soldier writhing in agony. He felt that the peacebuilders (referring to the peacebuilding coordinators, vendors, and consultants) were disingenuous. “Amnesty is a good program, but the vendor contracted to empower me messed up the whole empowerment. So, I don’t feel empowered,” he stated. My effort to elicit a reaction from Eze concerning the nature of peace in his community evoked a wave of unpleasant emotions in him that revealed the intricacies of peacebuilding in the oil region and the contested notion of peace, particularly in coastal communities that were the epicenter of insurgent activities. He stated unequivocally, “How can

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there be peace when [I] am suffering here in the village while the federal government is claiming to have empowered me?” I could not help but think that in a conversation lasting just a few minutes, Eze encapsulated my entire research program. Until I started to examine the peacebuilding program more critically to deepen my knowledge and understanding of its operations, I did not know that a host of problems had surfaced. My findings show that the peacebuilders and the ex-insurgents hold radically different worldviews about the process and outcome of post-conflict peacebuilding. The tension between these worldviews is what defines the nature of peace in the oil region of Nigeria. This book spins from the contested notion of peace in this region.

The Context of Post-conflict Peacebuilding Post-conflict peacebuilding efforts in Nigeria’s oil region developed from a history of struggle between ethnic minorities and the state, and between local communities and imperial corporations exploiting oil resources in the most brutal ways without regard for human rights. The insurgency, therefore, was not brought into existence in a contextual vacuum; it has its origins and antecedents that mostly point to the negative impact of oil extraction on local communities and the environment (Okonta and Douglas 2003; Watts 2008). The paradox of oil-generated wealth amidst growing inequality in the oil region gave impetus to the explosion of insurgent groups using violence to draw attention to decades of marginalization (Ikelegbe 2006; Watts 2007; Idemudia 2009; Obi 2010; Chukwuemeka and Aghara 2010). The incontestable fact is that the general suffering of the people in the oil region had been a source of discontent among insurgent groups threatening to destabilize the petroleum industry to demonstrate their capabilities and authority (Omeje 2005; Ikelegbe 2006; Idemudia 2009; Watts 2007, 2009; Obi 2009, 2010; Chukwuemeka and Aghara 2010). The emergence of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF) in 2004 and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in late 2005, transformed the character of the insurgency by threatening to shut down the petroleum industry should the federal

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government fail to meet their demands (Watts 2005; Krepinevich 2009; Asuni 2009). In the context of the crippling of the oil industry triggered by the insurgency, the federal government granted amnesty to 30,000 insurgents in 2009. Amnesty provided a clean slate for the implementation of DDR measures amidst a raft of technical activities designed in principle to address the structural causes of insurgency and to instill an enduring peace across the oil region. Seven years later, regional peace collapsed when the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) emerged in early 2016 as the latest insurgent group in the oil region attacking petroleum infrastructure and causing a massive reduction in oil production in a campaign that sent Nigeria’s economy into a tailspin. These strategically coordinated attacks cut Nigeria’s oil output from 2.2 million barrels per day to 1.5 million barrels per day (Gaffey 2016). Although analysts have argued that the recurrence of conflict is determined by how it ended in the previous phase (Hartzell et al. 2001; Fortna 2003), this argument does not fully explain the situation in Nigeria’s oil region. As this book will show, the emergence of the NDA and its mode of insurgency raises theoretical questions that underlie the complexity of post-conflict peacebuilding, but it also provides the basis for an inquiry into the nature of peace in the oil region.

Why This Investigation Matters Nigeria’s oil region faces an array of security threats that make the need to address the success and failure of post-conflict peacebuilding practices increasingly relevant. Threats arising from the implementation of DDR, particularly the lack of accountability to ex-insurgents, raise important concerns regarding security and stability in the post-conflict oil region. The unemployment crisis in the coastal communities is evident in a cursory look at the gross discontent among ex-insurgents who feel that the DDR program did not impact their lives as the federal government had promised. To them, DDR represents a failed intervention because it reinforces corruption, nepotism, and exclusion, with a disproportionate impact on the ex-insurgents, which renders the oil region vulnerable

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to a relapse into insurgency. There is also the economic expediency of peacebuilding—the transformation of the peacebuilding program into an industry racket that awards financial benefits to ex-insurgents. Other considerations give primacy to the lack of an approximation of the target beneficiaries for DDR, the role of predatory political elites in the peace process, a lack of accountability in peacebuilding programming, and the total disregard for environmental justice in a region where the very basis of survival depends on the natural ecosystem. As my interaction with ex-insurgents in the local communities became more frequent, more structural issues surfaced. These include employment discrimination against ex-insurgents by oil multinationals, monumental corruption by peacebuilders, and the erosion of trust in the peacebuilding program. In the background of these structural issues, stands the pragmatic question of whether the peacebuilders and the exinsurgents can achieve even minimum consensus on the practices that might enable them to build trust in the DDR program in a manner that would not jeopardize the prospects of sustainable peace. The incontestable fact is that the nature of peace in the oil region has been theoretically confusing due to the lack of an appropriate conceptual analysis beyond what Akinwale (2010) described as “amnesty peace.” The concept of “amnesty peace” underscores an attempt to focus peacebuilding exclusively on the immediate needs of ex-insurgents while neglecting other forms of injustices that affect the larger population (Akinwale 2010, 205). The implications for the failure of peacebuilding are far-reaching and connects with theoretical concerns about the nature of peace in the oil region. An examination of the context of post-conflict peacebuilding is a timely development that begins with an effort to understand peace through the lens of ex-insurgents and other community youth who did not engage in combat but were integrated into the peacebuilding program. In the context of this study, four visions of peace have emerged. They include (1) peace as freedom; (2) as social and infrastructural development; (3) as nonviolence, corresponding to the elimination of life-threatening behaviors; and (4) as the relative stability of the oil region. These visions reflect the lived realities, fears, and hopes of individuals who have lived through violence and seek a lasting solution

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to the instability that constantly threatens their freedom. Surprisingly, the structural issues that when transformed could serve as signposts to sustainable peace have received very little attention in the peacebuilding program. As Galtung (1996) pointed out, peacebuilding involves efforts to eliminate rather than reinforce the root causes of violence. This book makes the case that in seeking to transform Nigeria’s oil insurgency, we cannot ignore local perceptions of peace, especially in an environment where many ex-insurgents believe the peacebuilding program has not impacted them positively. There is also a need to seek a deeper understanding of post-conflict transformations in the oil region with regards to the effect of DDR on security stabilization and how these dynamics provide the basis for theorizing the nature of peace. Another issue that has received limited attention is that of empowerment. While empowerment has been a prominent theme in the peacebuilding program, the concept has received very little scholarly attention. Ajibola (2015) made an impressive attempt to investigate whether the process of empowering ex-insurgents can facilitate sustainable peace in the oil region, but he failed to contextualize the nature of empowerment and its theoretical implications. This book deepens our understanding of empowerment in connection with post-conflict peacebuilding practices and shows how actors perceive the concept differently. While the peacebuilders understand empowerment as a top-down solution, the exinsurgents perceive empowerment as the expression of personal agency that enables them to mobilize local resources for their individual and community transformation. The failure of the peacebuilders to direct DDR activities toward addressing development challenges in the oil region has reinforced a feeling of exclusion among ex-insurgents. The exclusion of key stakeholders from the DDR program was the result of adopting a top-down approach to peace, which concentrates power in a few ex-insurgent leaders to the detriment of their subordinates (Oyewo 2016). These shortcomings do not, however, undermine the genuine commitment by the federal government to peacebuilding (Ikelegbe and Umukoro 2016). Therefore, attempts to understand the impact of the DDR program require an evaluation of post-conflict transformations in the oil region

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against profound changes in the lives of ex-insurgents at the intrapersonal, cultural, structural, and interpersonal levels. These indicators are critical for evaluating whether and to what extent the stability of the oil region is by any means a consequence of specific peacebuilding activities. The return of insurgency in early 2016 reinforces the importance of such questions as to whether DDR has successfully weakened the capacity of insurgent groups or not. Moreover, while recognizing the government’s efforts to build the capacity of insurgents in a positive way through entrepreneurship, education, and vocational skill training, this book unravels a new way of measuring the success and failure of post-conflict peacebuilding.

The Argument Numerous explanations have been put forward to account for the success of the peacebuilding program in developing the capacity of ex-insurgents to participate in the local economy. The most common explanation suggests that the peacebuilding program has been instrumental to security stabilization in the oil region, enabling the state to pursue its strategic interests (Ushie 2013). Others have criticized the failure of Nigeria’s DDR program to create the conditions for durable peace. These perspectives emphasize the consequences of using monetary rewards to buy peace from insurgents while ignoring the widely shared grievances of local communities (Davidheiser and Nyiayaana 2011; Ajayi and Adesote 2013; Obi 2014; Okonofua 2016; Schultze-Kraft 2017). This includes the limited capacity of the current peacebuilding framework to transform the insurgency in the long term (Aghedo 2012; Agbiboa 2015). While the central thread in these explanations attributes the failure of peacebuilding to deficiencies in the strategies designed to prevent a relapse into insurgency, this book appraises the implication of these strategies for the nature of peace in the oil region. The starting point of this discussion is to acknowledge that the interventions pursued by the peacebuilders have been successful in halting the insurgency, stabilizing the fragile post-conflict environment, and building the ability of insurgents to reintegrate into society. However, they fail to transform

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the political dynamics through which corruption, nepotism, and exclusion manifest in the peacebuilding program. These dynamics influence the distribution of peacebuilding benefits in ways that reward some exinsurgents while alienating others. As resentment grows, some vulnerable actors have mobilized violence as a strategy to negotiate their access to the material incentives of peacemaking. In this context, this book argues that the failure of the peacebuilders to address the structural tensions at the root of insurgency—along with competition for access to the material incentives of peacebuilding—have revived insurgency at repeated intervals that left the post-conflict society in a state of punctuated peace. By studying the periods of stability and instability over the life cycle of the peace process, this book traces the nature of peace in the oil region to punctuated peace. The idea of punctuated peace represents a novel effort to conceptualize post-conflict transformations in the oil region and provide context for this book. This book shows persuasively that peace in the oil region is an essential condition for national security, and the federal government has shown genuine commitment to the peacebuilding program, although more sincere efforts are needed to instill an enduring peace in the oil region. Whether the government’s approach to peacebuilding has inadvertently contributed to the establishment of systems and structures in which violence, insecurity, and instability are pervasive or re-emerge over time remains a prominent question in this book. This book presents a robust analysis of how argument, theory, evidence, and method are linked together to establish an overarching claim regarding notions of empowerment, the failure of DDR design, the conditions that contribute to conflict escalation, and challenges for sustainable peace in the oil region. One critical challenge that this book raises is how to translate peace research into conceptual models that can help analyze post-conflict peacebuilding processes and outcomes, reduce the risk of insurgency, and enhance human dignity and the fulfillment of human potential. This challenge is critical to the growing interest in the field of peace and conflict studies to explore transformative and emancipatory approaches for dealing with intractable conflicts.

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The Approach and Scope of the Book To understand Nigeria’s efforts to address the risk of oil insurgency and the impact of its interventions, this book draws on fieldwork completed in Nigeria between 2017 and 2019. Data collection includes in-depth interviews conducted as part of my doctoral dissertation between 2017 and 2018 and subsequent interviews conducted in 2019 to deepen my understanding of post-conflict transformations in the oil region. I conducted 100 interviews with former insurgents from Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, and Rivers States, including peacebuilders who are peripheral to these locations. Akwa Ibom is a low-conflict state that represents 20% of Nigeria’s oil production from predominantly offshore locations dominated by ExxonMobil. In contrast, Rivers and Bayelsa are high-conflict states with an oil production capacity of 24% each from both offshore and onshore locations dominated by Shell (Idemudia 2014). I selected these locations due to their geographic proximity, the number of exinsurgents living in these localities, their willingness to share information about the insurgency and peacebuilding program voluntarily, and my accessibility to the insurgents. I interviewed two categories of ex-insurgents: those who benefited from the training and post-training empowerment opportunities designed to reintegrate them into society, and those who participated in the peacebuilding program partially and did not reap its full benefits. I selected 90% of the key informants from these categories. I recruited several ex-insurgents during the Amnesty Refresher Training Course on Entrepreneurship held in Calabar, Cross River State, leveraging my contacts at the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta (OSAPND). I first identified the ex-insurgents from a database of the Presidential Amnesty Program (PAP), the federal government agency responsible for coordinating the peacebuilding program. The amnesty database includes delegates who participated in, or benefitted from, a variety of technical programs, including vocational skill training, entrepreneurship, and scholarship. After the initial contact with the participants, which mostly occurred over the phone, I traveled to their

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various communities to conduct interviews while at the same time soliciting referrals to other ex-insurgents and obtaining help in identifying them. I also interviewed non-insurgents—individuals who have no direct involvement with the insurgency but are considered significant actors whose opinion matters due to their role in the peace process, their connection to conflict-affected communities, their status in the oil industry, or their knowledge of the peacebuilding program. They include the consultants who facilitated the DDR program, vendors, youth leaders, women leaders, recipients of the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship, oil workers, and C-Suite executives at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Some interviews were conducted via Skype and over the phone. Within the three study locations, I visited several coastal communities to observe the post-conflict environment and take inventory of entrepreneurship programs sponsored by OSAPND to facilitate the economic reintegration of ex-insurgents. I also observed the attitudes of the ex-insurgents concerning the peacebuilding program. In Akwa Ibom State, I conducted interviews with youth leaders in the Ibeno community and with students undertaking degree programs at Ritman University, Ikot Ekpene, under the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship. I interviewed students who identified as former insurgents as well as others who did not participate in the insurgency but experienced its impact on their communities. In Rivers State, I conducted interviews in the Isiokpo community in Ikwere, Nkpor village in Kalabari, and Port-Harcourt city and its surrounding coastal communities where many ex-insurgents reside. In Bayelsa State, I concentrated my interviews in Yenagoa and in the Peremabiri community in southern Ijaw where there is a considerable presence of ex-insurgents. My time in the coastal communities enabled me to connect with voiceless ex-insurgents who possess an in-depth knowledge of the insurgency and peacebuilding program but who are usually not consulted by researchers. Acknowledging these voiceless constituencies enabled me to validate the reliability of the data and ensure that respondents were speaking from experience. I made several return trips to research sites I had previously visited to validate my findings. With the assistance of

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OSAPND, I gained access to unclassified documents, which would be difficult to obtain without such connections. Having the opportunity to attend the refresher training programs organized for ex-insurgents gave me ample opportunity to interact with them, observe their attitudes, connect with their worldviews, and validate my interview findings. While the participants spoke on the condition of anonymity, it was helpful to use pseudonyms in order to protect their identities. My critical analysis focuses on the impact of DDR activities in addressing the structural causes of insurgency and the transformations emerging from these processes. By studying the implementation of the peacebuilding program locally and internationally, I determined trends in terms of their success and failure. However, my analysis gives recognition to the role that local actors and context play in informing an understanding of post-conflict transformations in the oil region.

Organization of the Book This book is organized into three parts comprising of nine chapters, including the introductory chapter. Part 1 of the book, comprising Chapters 2–4, discusses the transition from conflict to peace and provides context for evaluating the success of the peacebuilding program. Chapter 2 shows how concepts of amnesty traverse transitional justice and post-conflict peacebuilding practices to create a stable and secure post-conflict environment for nurturing a durable peace. This chapter evaluates the effectiveness of amnesty against its ability to lay the foundation for security stabilization in the oil region. More importantly, this chapter places the peacebuilding program in context to deepen our understanding of the degree to which it promises to fulfill or impair the state’s obligations to secure and stabilize the oil region. Chapter 3 presents a transformational model that can be useful for measuring success in post-conflict peacebuilding processes. This model shows that conflict transformation occurs when there is a significant change in a post-conflict society at four levels: cultural, intrapersonal, structural, and interpersonal. The success of post-conflict peacebuilding is measured against the identifiable changes that former insurgents

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consider essential for the stability of the oil region. This also includes the discoveries from my interviews with peacebuilding consultants contracted by the OSAPND to facilitate the training of ex-insurgents in South Korea. I illustrate how these transformations provide a conceptual framework for measuring success in post-conflict peacebuilding processes. Chapter 4 examines the concept of “empowerment” that has become a new buzzword in post-conflict peacebuilding practices in the oil region. I show how perceptions and misperceptions of “empowerment” mirror contrasting experiences in the peace process that generates a feeling of disempowerment among the ex-insurgents. These contrasting experiences form the basis of my argument that the success and failure of post-conflict peacebuilding lie at the heart of peacebuilding design and implementation. Part 2, comprising Chapters 5–6, examines the factors and actors that are implicated in the collapse and revival of the Niger Delta peace process. Chapter 5 examines the changing landscape of insurgency in the oil region. I focus on the conditions that motivate insurgent groups to resume violence that targets the nation’s petroleum industry at different intervals, while a peace process is ongoing. I illustrate how new forms of insurgencies are emerging from nepotistic peacebuilding practices that foster corruption, exclusion, alienation, and marginalization. Chapter 6 shows how the monetization of peacebuilding manifests in a peace economy whereby anyone with a grievance can mobilize arms to attack oil infrastructure as an attractive means of making easy money. My analysis shows how the peace economy constitutes a strategic danger to the long-term stability of the oil region. Part 3, comprising Chapters 7–9, discusses the conceptions of peace in the oil region. Chapter 7 presents four visions of peace—stability, freedom, development, and nonviolence—indicating that peacebuilding will be most effective when the strategies and actions considered appropriate for dealing with insurgency rely upon the lived experiences of local constituents. Chapter 8 presents a new theoretical concept in postconflict peacebuilding research that explains the nature of peace in the oil region and provides context for this book. A fundamental concern that this chapter raises is whether stabilizing security in the oil region correlates with the experience of peace, and how to conceptualize the

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nature of peace. The emerging theoretical concept is heuristically framed as punctuated peace. I develop punctuated peace theory to give an explanation to the complex challenge of peacebuilding in Nigeria’s oil region and using empirical evidence from post-conflict societies outside Nigeria to buttress the theory. In Chapter 9, I summarize my findings and identify their implications for research and practice, including presenting policy-relevant recommendations as a pathway to positive peacebuilding.

References Agbiboa, Daniel A. 2015. Transformational Strategy or Gilded Pacification? Four Years on: The Niger Delta Armed Conflict and the DDR Process of the Nigerian Amnesty Programme. Journal of Asian and African Studies 50 (4): 387–411. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909614530082. Aghedo, Iro. 2012. Winning the War, Losing the Peace: Amnesty and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peace-Building in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Journal of Asian and African Studies 48 (3): 267–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/002 1909612453987. Ajayi, Adegboyega I., and Adesola S. Adesote. 2013. The Gains and Pains of the Amnesty Programme in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, 2007–2012: A Preliminary Assessment. Journal of Asian and African Studies 48 (4): 506–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909613493607. Ajibola, Iyabobola O. 2015. Nigeria’s Amnesty Program: The Role of Empowerment in Achieving Peace and Development in Post-Conflict Niger Delta. SAGE Open 5(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244015589996. Akinwale, Akeem Ayofe. 2010. Amnesty and Human Capital Development Agenda for the Niger Delta. Journal of African Studies and Development 2 (8): 201–17. Asuni, Judith Burdin. 2009. Understanding the Armed Groups of the Niger Delta. Working Paper, Council on Foreign Relations. Accessed August 20, 2018. https://www.cfr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2009/09/CFR_Workin gPaper_2_NigerDelta.pdf. Chukwuemeka, Emma E. O., and V.N.O. Aghara. 2010. Niger Delta Youth Restiveness and Socioeconomic Development in Nigeria. Educational Research and Review 5 (7): 400–7.

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Davidheiser, Mark, and Kialee Nyiayaana. 2011. Demobilization or Remobilization? The Amnesty Program and the Search for Peace in the Niger Delta. African Security 4 (1): 44–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392206. 2011.551063. Fortna, Virginia Page. 2003. Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace. International Organization 57 (2): 337–72. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0020818303572046. Gaffey, Conor. 2016. Niger Delta Avengers Threaten Further Violence in Oil-Producing Region. Newsweek, June 14. Accessed June 20, 2018. http://www.newsweek.com/nigeria-niger-delta-avengers-threaten-fur ther-violence-oil-producing-region-470073. Galttun, Johan. 1996. Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict Development and Civilization. London, United Kingdom: Sage. Hartzell, Caroline, Mathew Hoddie, and Donald Rothchild. 2001. Stabilizing the Peace After Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key Variables. International Organization 55 (1): 183–208. https://doi.org/10.1162/002081801 551450. Idemudia, Uwafiokun. 2009. The Changing Phases of the Niger Delta Conflict: Implications for Conflict Escalation and the Return to Peace. Conflict, Security and Development 9 (3): 307–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14678800903142698. ———. 2014. Corporate Social Responsibility and Development in Africa: Issues and Possibilities. Geography Compass 8 (7): 421–35.https://doi.org/ 10.1111/gec3.12143. Ikelegbe, Augustine. 2006. Beyond the Threshold of Civil Struggle: Youth Militancy and the Militarization of the Resource Conflict in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. African Study Monographs 27 (2): 87–122. Accessed February 20, 2019. https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/ 2433/68251/1/ASM_27_87.pdf. Ikelegbe, Augustine, and Nathaniel Umukoro. 2016. The Amnesty Programme and the Resolution of the Niger Delta Crisis: Progress, Challenges and Prognosis, Monograph Series No. 14. Benin City: Centre for Population and Environmental Development. Krepinevich, Andew. 2009. 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Obi, Cyril I. 2009. Nigeria’s Niger Delta: Understanding the Complex Drivers of Violent Oil-related Conflict. Africa Development 34 (2): 103–28. http:// dx.doi.org/10.4314/ad.v34i2.57373.

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———. 2010. Oil Extraction, Dispossession, Resistance, and Conflict in Nigeria’s Oil-Rich Niger Delta. Canadian Journal of Development Studies 30 (1–2): 219–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2010.9669289. ———. 2014. Oil and the Post-Amnesty Programme (PAP): What Prospects for Sustainable Development and Peace in the Niger Delta? Review of African Political Economy 41 (140): 249–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244. 2013.872615. Okonofua, Benjamin A. 2016. The Niger Delta Amnesty Program: The Challenges of Transitioning from Peace Settlements to Long-Term Peace. SAGE Open 6 (2): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016654522. Okonta, Ike, and Oronto Douglas. 2003. Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights, and Oil in the Niger Delta. London, UK: Verso. Omeje, Kenneth. 2005. Oil Conflicts in Nigeria: Contending Issues and Perspectives of the Local Niger Delta Issue. New Political Economy 10 (3): 321–334. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563460500204183. Oyewo, Hussain T. 2016. Nigeria: The Challenges of Reintegrating Niger Delta Militants. Conflict Studies Quarterly 17: 57–72. March 12, 2018. http:// www.csq.ro/wp-content/uploads/Hussain-Taofik-OYEWO.pdf. Schultze-Kraft, Markus. 2017. Understanding Organised Violence and Crime in Political Settlements: Oil Wars, Petro-criminality and Amnesty in the Niger Delta. Journal of International Development 29 (5): 613–27. https:// doi.org/10.1002/jid.3287. Ushie, Vanessa. 2013. Nigeria’s Amnesty Programme as a Peacebuilding Infrastructure: A Silver Bullet? Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 8 (1): 30–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2013.789255. Watts, Michael. 2005. Righteous Oil? Human Rights, the Oil Complex and Corporate Social Responsibility. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30: 373–407. ———. 2007. Petro-Insurgency or Criminal Syndicate? Conflict and Violence in the Niger Delta. Review of African Political Economy 114: 637–60. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03056240701819517. ———. 2008. Anatomy of an Oil Insurgency. In InExtractive Economies and Conflicts in the Global South, ed. Kenneth Omeje, 51–74. London, UK: Ashgate. ———. 2009. Crude Politics: Life and Death on the Nigerian Oil Fields. Niger Delta Economies of Violence, Working Paper No. 25.

Part I The Transition from Conflict to Peace

2 Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

Over the years, the impact of Nigeria’s oil insurgency has generated a confluence of scholarly concerns that are evident in the growth of transitional justice and post-conflict peacebuilding research. These concerns arose from political developments in the 2000s that saw a dramatic shift in strategy from the initial nonviolent character of the Niger Delta struggle to a full-blown insurgency that significantly impacted Nigeria’s petroleum industry (Quaker-Dokubo 2005; Oche 2005). The violence assumed a criminal dimension with the prevalence of political kidnappings, hostage taking, armed robbery, and sea piracy. A report of the Niger Delta Technical Committee (NDTC) showed that the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) carried out “66 attacks, resulting in 317 deaths, 30 injuries, and 113 kidnappings” between 2006 and 2008 (NDTCR 2008, 116–19). The June 19, 2008 attack on the Bonga oilfield—one of the largest oilfields on the Gulf of Guinea, belonging to Shell—resulted in a decline in Nigeria’s oil output, and this meant the capacity of insurgent groups to debilitate the oil industry was no longer in doubt (Watts 2009). The prevalence of criminal activities was an indication of the failure of counterinsurgency in the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 O. Okoi, Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2_2

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oil region, illustrating that the state’s militarization strategy was counterproductive. The path to peace was challenging, and the state grappled unsuccessfully with the prospect of finding the most effective counterinsurgency strategy. Then on June 25, 2009, President Musa Yar’Adua offered amnesty to insurgents within a comprehensive DDR program. This chapter will examine how concepts of amnesty traverse transitional justice and post-conflict peacebuilding practices in the oil region. Amnesty became a necessary condition for peace after the insurgents had been prosecuted for their criminal behaviors. Even though the state reserves the right to decide which behaviors are considered legal or illegal, the search for durable peace cannot ignore the structural causes of insurgency. Because these causal conditions are complex and interwoven, they call to question the effectiveness of amnesty and its corollary DDR program as vehicles for peacebuilding. However, the success of these interventions depends on their ability to address structural issues and instill an enduring peace across the oil region. This chapter draws attention to the notion of amnesty as critical when evaluating the degree to which it promises to fulfill the state’s obligation to ensure the stability and security of the oil region.

Amnesty and Transitional Justice The proliferation of transitional justice processes over the past few decades has been motivated by the need to consolidate peace and prevent further escalation of violence in post-conflict societies. The concept of transitional justice describes more broadly how states transitioning from war or dictatorship should deal with past criminal atrocities (Mallinder and McEvoy 2011). At the core of the transitional justice process is an effort to identify and hold perpetrators accountable for wartime criminal atrocities while promoting reconciliation as a precondition for peace (Westendorf 2015). As Andrieu (2010, 538) noted, transitional justice is an essential component of liberal peacebuilding processes. Framing the scope of transitional justice requires a juxtaposition of notions of peace and justice as evident in the Ugandan peace process (Keller 2008), or even an attempt to resolve the dilemma of balancing these notions

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during the process of demobilizing ex-militants, as was evident in the Colombian peace and transitional justice process (Arvelo 2006). While post-war peace processes mostly focus exclusively on technical reform, they downplay the importance of local dynamics and power imbalances within society, which often define the conditions for post-conflict peacebuilding. Within this context, transitional justice processes direct attention to local dynamics and power structures as the basis of action (Westendorf 2015). Although the study of transitional justice and peacebuilding has meant that these processes are incongruent, in practice, the distinction between them has not been clearly defined (Baker and Obradovic-Wochnik 2016). What is important, however, is the relevance of both concepts in broadening the analytical scope of the “peace versus justice” debate. The concern has much to do with the consequences of prosecuting and punishing perpetrators of war crimes, which includes a relapse into conflict. The question is whether when seeking to prosecute the perpetrators of wartime crimes and prevent a relapse into conflict, peacebuilders should focus on achieving peace through justice (Kerr 2007) or prioritize peace over justice (Bratt 1997). In practice, the “peace versus justice” debate has profound implications for post-conflict peacebuilding in situations where a government decides to implement amnesty as a central pillar of the transitional justice process. The term amnesty derived its roots in the Greek word amnestia, translated as “forgetfulness” (Orentlicher 1991, 2543). In the broadest sense, amnesty is a legal instrument used by states to prevent criminal prosecutions against individuals who have violated the law. Historically, amnesties were granted to individuals or groups to ensure political stability and reinforce the legitimacy of state power rather than as a mechanism for promoting “political transitions” (Mallinder and McEvoy 2011, 112). Amnesty laws were enacted to exempt a group of people from criminal liability, where past criminal atrocities go unpunished. The granting of amnesty is neither a denial that crimes have been committed nor a vindication of the perpetrators’ past criminal atrocities (Poole 2009). Rather, it is to prevent the pursuit of legal punishment for these crimes (Mallinder and McEvoy 2011). Within peace transitions, a national government may decide to enact amnesty laws to

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enable the implementation of peace agreements between adversaries, to encourage insurgents to disarm, or even to release individuals who have been incarcerated for political reasons (Freeman 2009). Despite the growing importance of amnesty in transitional justice processes, its meaning appears contradictory. On the one hand, amnesty refers to the recognition of past criminal atrocities, and on the other hand, it involves forgetting these crimes in order to prevent the prosecution of the perpetrators or even “making past atrocities a subject of public debate” (Mallinder and McEvoy 2011, 112). In the wake of the Sierra Leonean Civil War, the signing of the Lomé Peace Agreement between the government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) on July 7, 1999, included granting amnesty to former combatants for crimes committed since 1991. Immediately after signing the Accord, President Ahmad Kabbah granted amnesty to rebels and ordered the release of political prisoners representing military personnel and civilians, including the RUF rebel leader Foday Sankoh. In Afghanistan, a coalition of warlords and their supporters passed the National Stability and Reconciliation Law in 2007 to exempt some individuals from criminal liability and prevent their prosecution for human rights atrocities committed in the past. The growth of international legal instruments since the early 1990s has been fundamental to the development of transitional justice processes and the protection of human rights atrocities in many countries. As a result, there has been a backlash, specifically from “civil society campaigns and international and hybrid legal institutions against onesided amnesty laws” enacted by human rights perpetrators, such as state leaders and warlords, to protect themselves from prosecution (Mallinder and McEvoy 2011, 112). The experience in South America shows that very few perpetrators of heinous crimes have been successful in shielding themselves from prosecution (Collins 2010). Recently, the perpetrators of criminal atrocities during Latin America’s dictatorship era in the wake of the Cold War in the1970s and 1980s were brought to justice, despite amnesty laws enacted to exempt them from prosecution. In El Salvador, political leaders introduced an amnesty law to prohibit the prosecution and imprisonment of former Marxist guerillas and military personnel accused of criminal atrocities linked to the killing of

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75,000 people and 8,000 people who disappeared during the 1980–1992 bloody civil war. When the Salvadoran amnesty law for perpetrators of grave human rights abuses was annulled in 2016 by the court, it signaled a major victory for victims of the armed conflict and human rights advocacy groups against a renewed attempt by legislators to codify impunity. This major leap provided an unprecedented opportunity for El Salvador to break from its history of impunity and pursue the path of truth and justice. But in a Legislative Assembly dominated by lawmakers who themselves were accomplices in the human rights atrocities that became their duty to address, some legislators appeared intent on enacting the amnesty law to codify impunity. However, a coalition of civil society groups led by victims and their families, as well as the human rights community, prevented this injustice from materializing. These cases exemplify the challenge of implementing amnesty to exempt perpetrators from past criminal liabilities. They show that achieving transitional justice by means of amnesty is a complex undertaking, especially where state actors are implicated in past criminal atrocities. In the Nigerian context, the state granted amnesty to insurgents who had been prosecuted for perpetrating criminal activities in the oil region, such as kidnapping, hostage taking, and attacks on petroleum infrastructure. The presumption of Nigeria’s amnesty program was that the willingness of the insurgents to accept amnesty would enable them to participate in a DDR program that would foster reconciliation and peacebuilding. But some insurgents were initially unwilling to accept amnesty because of its criminal implications. Those who eventually accepted amnesty prefer to identify as “agitators”—an identity they believe confers on them some agency. The challenge, however, lies in whether the insurgency was public-spirited—for which the insurgents could justifiably identify as “agitators”—or involved activities that could be described as criminal in accordance with state laws. Regardless of this challenge, what needs to be settled is that amnesty was instrumental in establishing a secure environment for DDR implementation.

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The Context of Amnesty Nigeria’s oil insurgency was at its peak when President Yar’Adua resumed office in 2007. The economic impact of the insurgency prompted Yar’Adua to include peacebuilding in his Seven-Point Agenda. The process began with the South-South Legislative Retreat convened in Port Harcourt city in August 2008 in response to the longstanding advocacy among intellectuals from the South-South region for a review of the national constitution to reflect Nigeria’s federalist principles. This effort culminated in a communiqué condemning the criminal approach to the Niger Delta struggle while recommending a constitutional structure that would grant autonomy to each state in the oil region to control the natural resources located on its territory, repeal “obnoxious petroleum laws,” and grant amnesty to the insurgents (Ikelegbe and Umukoro 2016, 38). The communiqué gave impetus to the establishment of a Security and Peace Committee chaired by Vice President Goodluck Jonathan (who later took over as Commander-in-Chief following President Yar’Adua’s death) in brokering peace with the insurgents. Yar’Adua’s first response was to inaugurate a technical committee composed of forty-five persons with the mandate to review the recommendations of the various reports on Niger Delta development—from the Willink Commission Report of 1958 to the 2005 Niger Delta Human Development Report to the 2006 Report of the Presidential Council on the Social and Economic Development of the Coastal States. The technical committee submitted its recommendations to the federal government based on a synthesis of fourteen reports containing proposed solutions to the insurgency. These recommendations included granting amnesty to leaders of the various insurgent groups within a comprehensive DDR program; the need to increase oil revenue allocation to Niger Delta states; the development of infrastructure in the oil region; and the creation of institutions to support the development of the oil region (Adeyemo and Olu-Adeyemi 2010, 44). These recommendations were to assist the federal government in facilitating peace in the oil region. In the wake of the insurgency in 2009, President Yar’Adua announced the federal government’s plan to facilitate the transition from war to peace in the oil region by granting an amnesty and unconditional pardon

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to insurgents on June 25. The conditions of amnesty included a 60-day moratorium between August 6 and October 4, 2009. This demonstrated the state’s commitment to peace and stability in the oil region. The terms of amnesty involved the insurgents surrendering their arms and unconditionally renouncing insurgency, and a signed undertaking to this effect. A distinguishing feature of Nigeria’s amnesty program was the state’s recognition of the development challenges in the oil region as primarily the result of failed attempts by previous governments to address the primary concerns of Niger Delta people. While the state had declared the insurgency as an unlawful means of agitation, it also recognized the inherent abilities of the insurgents and the need to harness their full potential in addressing the development challenges in the oil region. As Freeman (2010, 3) noted, amnesty was the most viable option likely to end the insurgency. Within this context, amnesty represents a step towards ending insurgency and creating a stable environment for peacebuilding.

Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration DDR is a process of post-conflict peacebuilding through which members of insurgent groups are supported in surrendering their weapons and returning to civilian life. A complex process, it includes a set of activities aimed at creating an environment where peace and sustainable development can take place. These activities are beneficial for the durability of peace in the short term and may contribute to sustaining peace in the long term (Freeman 2010, 1). Whether durable peace is achievable in the oil region depends on the extent to which the DDR program is successful in addressing the structural causes of insurgency.

Disarmament Disarmament is the process of securing a post-conflict society by eliminating arms, ammunitions, and weapons. In the context of Nigeria’s peacebuilding program, disarmament activities were carried out by the

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military under the supervision of OSAPND. These activities included the collection of small arms, ammunitions, weapons, and explosives from the insurgents and ensuring the safe storage and destruction of these weapons. The insurgents were asked to report at various centers in Akwa Ibom, Edo, Bayelsa, Delta, Cross River, Ondo, and Rivers States to surrender their arms and ammunition to the state, accept amnesty, and enroll in the DDR program. Between June 26 and October 3, 2009, leaders of the various insurgent groups led their foot soldiers to accept amnesty and enroll in the DDR program. Ebikabowei Victor-Ben, commonly known as “General Boyloaf,” led a group of insurgents in surrendering their weapons on August 22, 2009, following the release of Henry Okah, a notorious insurgent leader who was incarcerated for his role in the insurgency (Gilbert 2010). Soboma George also led a group of insurgents in surrendering their weapons and accepting amnesty on August 13, 2009. The leader of the Niger Delta Volunteers, Ateke Tom, surrendered his arms to the state on October 3, 2009, as did Fara Dagogo of the Niger Delta Strike Force. The leader of MEND, Government Ekpemulo (also known as “Tompolo”), accepted amnesty after surrendering an assortment of weapons and explosives on October 4, 2009. The Presidential Amnesty Implementation Committee recovered a total of 520 arms, 95,970 rounds of ammunition, and 16 gunboats in Bayelsa state alone (Gilbert 2010). The presidency extended amnesty and pardons to insurgents who did not comply with the initial grace period but were willing to disarm after October 4, 2009. Of the 30,000 registered participants in the amnesty program between 2010 and 2012, about 20,192 were documented and demobilized in the first phase, 6,166 in the second phase, and 3,642 in the third phase (Premium Times 2012; Zena 2013, 4; Ikelegbe and Umukoro 2016, 39). One question that continues to spur discussion is the actual number of ex-insurgents. Asuni (2009) drew attention to a 2007 study by Academic Associates PeaceWorks (AAPW) that identified forty-eight insurgent groups in the oil region comprising of over 25,000 members. The study further estimated that approximately 60,000 people participated in the insurgency. However, official government records indicate that by 2015, a total of 30,000 delegates enrolled in the DDR program. The former

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Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on Niger Delta Affairs and Chairman of PAP Kingsley Kuku confirmed during an interview with Premium Times on December 24, 2012, that a total of 30,000 insurgents had enrolled in the amnesty program. However, empirical evidence from my field research revealed that the 30,000 delegates were not entirely ex-insurgents but included community youth from the oil region who had leveraged their connection to the peacebuilders and some political elites to enroll in the program. Or, they enrolled through bribery. In addition to arms collection and destruction, disarmament activities included the temporary camping of insurgents at the Obubra camp in Cross River State for documentation, assessment, and biometrics before demobilizing them. Our concern, however, is to understand whether taking arms from insurgents has eliminated the means of violence, strengthened communication between conflicted parties, decreased the level of fear among civilians in both the local and urban communities, and increased the level of trust between ex-insurgents and the state and between communities and oil multinationals. This concern is central to the discussion in Chapter 3, which focuses on measures of success in post-conflict peacebuilding processes.

Demobilization Demobilization is the process of disbanding armed groups to prevent a relapse into conflict. In the Niger Delta context, demobilization activities were designed to break the command structure of the insurgent groups and to transform the insurgents into civilian status. The ex-insurgents had to undergo a verification and documentation process and wellness assessment to evaluate their physical well-being, followed by transformational training designed to demilitarize their mindset and instill a culture of nonviolence in them. In addition to these activities, the ex-insurgents received career guidance to educate them about the various opportunities available to them under PAP and the qualifications for assessing these opportunities.

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The question remains whether and how the transformational training has increased the consciousness of nonviolence among ex-insurgents and transformed them into law-abiding citizens. Further, the impact of the transitional support to ex-insurgents needs to be examined. The outcome of demobilization is evaluated against the positive behavioral changes among the ex-insurgents in relation to their willingness or unwillingness to resume violence, and the relative stability of the oil region as demonstrated empirically in Chapter 3.

Reintegration Reintegration is the process by which ex-insurgents acquire civilian status and gain access to employment and income. By its very design, reintegration activities are integrated into the national development framework. After the demobilization phase ended on September 29, 2011, OSAPND began the process of reintegrating the ex-insurgents in partnership with the private sector. Reintegration activities included human capital development through formal education and vocational skill training as well as entrepreneurship development training conducted locally and overseas. Many ex-insurgents were awarded the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship to study in foreign or local universities. Others were deployed to South Africa, England, Greece, Jordan, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates for pilot and aviation maintenance engineering training, and still others were trained in other vocations such as pipeline welding, marine technology, electrical installation, and hospitality management. Reintegration activities are measured by whether and how interventions such as education, skill training, and support of entrepreneurship have reduced the risk of violence in the oil region and enhanced the prospects of ex-insurgents contributing to national development. My study shows that a significant number of ex-insurgents received entrepreneurship training that enhanced their capacity to start and grow small businesses that impact their communities. While the DDR program builds implicitly on amnesty and focuses on disarming the insurgents, it also emphasizes efforts to implement capacity building activities to improve their socioeconomic well-being.

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For example, a recent study argues that DDR has reduced small arms and light weapons, decreased the attacks on oil infrastructure, and improved human development in the oil region (Ebiede et al. 2020). While the conclusion drawn by these scholars aligns with the result of my study in Akwa Ibom, Rivers and Bayelsa, it is weakened by their failure to demonstrate whether and to what extent this effort has undermined the capacity of the insurgent groups to resume hostilities in the future and why the peace process has collapsed at repeated intervals. This concern receives extensive analytical attention in Chapter 5 and forms the basis of the theoretical discussion in Chapter 8.

Conclusion Following the explosion of activist groups in Nigeria’s oil region, which metamorphosed into a full-blown insurgency in the 2000s, the Nigerian state implemented amnesty and it’s corollary DDR interventions. This chapter presents the context of post-conflict peacebuilding in the oil region and shows that amnesty can serve as an instrument for relationship transformation between the state and insurgent groups who have committed criminal atrocities that the state considers unlawful means of agitation, and that these processes can lead to security stabilization in the oil region. This chapter has shown that amnesty provided a clean slate for the implementation of a DDR program that takes into consideration the importance of harnessing the inherent potential of the insurgents as a resource for peace and development in the oil region. In the chapters that follow, I examine the transformations emerging from the implementation of amnesty and DDR, taking into consideration how these interventions have brought stability to the region. The fact that leaders of the notorious insurgent groups have mobilized their members to disarm and accept amnesty is an indication of the positive results that have emerged from the peacebuilding program. By placing amnesty within the context of transitional justice, we can understand how it traverses within DDR practices in the oil region.

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References Adeyemo, David, and Lanre Olu-Adeyemi. 2010. Amnesty in a Vacuum: The Unending Insurgency in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. In Checkmating the Resurgence of Oil Violence in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, ed. Victor Ojakorotu and Lysias Dodd Gilbert, 28–50. Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. http://www.iags.org/Niger_Delta_book.pdf. Andrieu, Kora. 2010. Civilizing Peacebuilding: Transitional Justice, Civil Society and the Liberal Paradigm. Security Dialogue 41 (5): 537–58. Arvelo, José E. 2006. International Law and Conflict Resolution in Colombia: Balancing Peace and Justice in the Paramilitary Demobilization Process. Georgetown Journal of International Law 37 (2): 411–76. Asuni, Judith Burdin. 2009. Understanding the Armed Groups of the Niger Delta. Working Paper, Council on Foreign Relations. Accessed August 20, 2018. https://www.cfr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2009/09/CFR_Workin gPaper_2_NigerDelta.pdf. Baker, Catherine, and Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik. 2016. Mapping the Nexus of Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding. Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 10 (3): 281–301. https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2016.119 9483. Bratt, Duane. 1997. Peace over Justice: Developing a Framework for UN Peacekeeping Operations in Internal Conflicts. Global Governance 5 (1): 63–81. Collins, Cath. 2010. Post-Transitional Justice: Human Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Ebiede, Tarila Marclint, Arnim Langer, and Jale Tosun. 2020. Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration: Analysing the Outcomes of Nigeria’s Post-Amnesty Programme. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 9 (1): 1–17. http://doi.org/10.5334/sta.752. Freeman, Mark. 2009. Necessary Evils: Amnesty and the Search for Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2010. Amnesties and DDR Programs. International Center for Transitional Justice. Accessed March 5, 2020. http://ictj.org/sites/default/files/ ICTJ-DDR-Amnesties-ResearchBrief-2010-English.pdf. Gilbert, Lysias D. 2010. Youth Militancy, Amnesty and Security in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. In Checkmating the Resurgence of Oil Violence in the

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Niger Delta of Nigeria, ed. Victor Ojakorotu and Lysias Dodd Gilbert, 28– 50. Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. http://www.iags.org/Niger_ Delta_book.pdf. Ikelegbe, Augustine and Nathaniel Umukoro. 2016. The Amnesty Programme and the Resolution of the Niger Delta Crisis: Progress, Challenges and Prognosis. Monograph Series No. 14. Benin City, Nigeria: Centre for Population and Environmental Development. Keller, Linda M. 2008. Achieving Peace with Justice: The International Criminal Court and Ugandan Alternative Justice Mechanisms. Connecticut Journal of International Law 23 (2): 209–80. Kerr, Rachel. 2007. Peace Through Justice? The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 7 (3): 373–85. Mallinder, Louise, and Kieran McEvoy. 2011. Rethinking Amnesties: Atrocity, Accountability and Impunity in Post-Conflict Societies. Contemporary Social Science 6 (1): 107–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450144.2010.534496. Niger Delta Technical Committee Report. 2008. Abuja, Nigeria: Federal Government of Nigeria. Oche, Ogaba. 2005. Low Intensity Conflicts, National Security and Democratic Sustenance. In Nigeria Under Democratic Rule, 1999–2003 (Vol. 2), ed. A. H. Saliu, 108–23. Ibadan, Nigeria: University Press. Orentlicher, Diane F. 1991. Settling Accounts: The Duty to Prosecute Human Rights Violations of a Prior Regime. Yale Law Journal 100 (8): 2537–615. Poole, Ross. 2009. Enacting Oblivion. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 22 (2): 149–57. Premium Times. 2012. Nigeria Enlists 30,000 Ex-militants in Presidential Amnesty Programme, Says Kuku. Accessed December 14, 2017. http:// www.premiumtimesng.com/news/112493-nigeria-enlists-30000-ex-milita nts-in-presidential-amnesty-programme-says-kuku.html. Quaker-Dokubo, Charles. 2005. Proliferation of Small Arms and National Security. In Nigeria Under Democratic Rule, 1999–2003 (Vol. 2), ed. A. H. Saliu, 128–37. Ibadan, Nigeria: University Press. Watts, Michael. 2009. Crude Politics: Life and Death on the Nigerian Oil Fields. Niger Delta Economies of Violence, Working Paper No. 25. Westendorf, Jasmine-Kim. 2015. Why Peace Processes Fail: Negotiating Insecurity After Civil War. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Zena, Prosper Nzekani. 2013. The Lessons and Limits of DDR in Africa. Africa Security Brief 24. January. Accessed May 23, 2018. https://www.files.ethz. ch/isn/158581/AfricaBriefFinal_24.pdf.

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An important milestone in Nigeria’s peacebuilding process was the federal government’s effort to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate the insurgents. From the beginning, there was a commitment by the federal government to restore peace in the oil region, which encouraged a significant investment of financial resources in DDR activities. Despite this effort, research on the peacebuilding process is severely hampered by the lack of empirical evidence concerning which DDR strategies have proven successful in transforming the insurgency toward more sustainable and peaceful outcomes. While the success of post-conflict peacebuilding interventions is mostly attributed to generic themes such as small arms and light weapons reduction, a decrease in criminal activities, and human capital development (Ajibola 2015; Okonofua 2016; Ikelegbe and Umukoro 2016; Ebiede et al. 2020), such presumptions would appear too simplistic without an assessment of how the perceived success is reflected in the lives of ex-insurgents and their communities over time. This chapter raises the question: How do we measure the success of post-conflict peacebuilding processes in Nigeria’s oil region? © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 O. Okoi, Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2_3

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Actors

Change Process

Conflict Ecosystem

Cultural Change

The Peacebuilding Universe

Change Determinants

Exposure to external environments

Interpersonal Change

RelaƟonship

Structural Change

Improvements in socioeconomic status

Intrapersonal Change

Level of self-awareness

Fig. 3.1 A model of transformative peacebuilding

In this book, I have conducted an extensive investigation of the various factors that have contributed to the success of post-conflict peacebuilding in the oil region, focusing particularly on four central themes: intrapersonal change, interpersonal change, structural change, and cultural change. These themes and their interrelationships underscore the identifiable changes that ex-insurgents consider instrumental in fostering peace and stability in the oil region. This chapter lays out a transformational model that identifies these factors as crucial indicators for measuring the success of post-conflict peacebuilding processes in the oil region. Research by Augsburger (1992) has shown that conflict transformation occurs when there are considerable changes in the structural, personal, cultural, and relational elements of a conflict system. These transformations involve changing attitudes and behaviors and transforming the conflict itself by defining, discovering, and removing incompatibilities between conflicted parties. In the context of Nigeria’s peacebuilding process, the theoretical argument is that ex-insurgents who have experienced improvements in their psychological and socioeconomic wellbeing have more incentive to become peaceful and law-abiding citizens and are less likely to resume insurgency. The model of transformative peacebuilding (see Fig. 3.1) defines one of the unique contributions of this book, adding substantial new knowledge to conflict transformation thinking.

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Measuring Interpersonal Change One of the fundamental steps a post-conflict society can take to prevent a relapse into armed conflict is to disarm combatants of small arms and weapons (Cerretti 2009). Research has shown that disarmament creates a safe post-conflict environment for nurturing durable peace by “eliminating the means of violence and building confidence among conflict parties and the civilian population” (Alden et al. 2011, 14). Although disarmament is understood to mean that all insurgents must surrender any arms and weapons in their possession, in some instances, distrust between insurgent groups and state actors has made this impracticable. In addition, disarmament can pose difficulties in any peace process because of the level of distrust between the adversaries (Dobbins et al. 2020). This challenge was particularly evident in Nigeria’s oil region where many insurgents initially expressed an unwillingness to turn in their weapons due to distrust of the federal government’s true intentions. This happens in situations where the burden for designing and implementing DDR falls principally on the national government. In Nigeria, disarmament was instrumental in the development of positive relationships between the insurgents and the state, and the result was more stability in the oil region. In Bridging Troubled Waters, LeBaron (2002, 19) labeled relationships “the medium in which conflict sprout and the soil that births and sustains resolution.” When actors in a conflict value their relationships, they become a resource for change. Relationship building is, in this context, a fundamental requirement for conflict transformation (LeBaron 2002). My ethnographic experience revealed that transformation occurred not only in the relationship between the insurgents and the state, but also between insurgents and other stakeholders adversely impacted by the insurgency, such as oil multinationals and the local communities where the insurgents come from. The appropriate concept that captures these transformations is that of “interpersonal change.” In this book, I define interpersonal change as the positive relationship that develops through the interactions between insurgents and the state as they engage in the process of peacebuilding. This relationship is sustained by the degree of trust that ex-insurgents have in the

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peacebuilding process. As the level of trust grew, it culminated in the development of positive relationships between the state and insurgents that enabled the implementation of DDR. By implication, the level of trust between actors determines the relationship pattern that eventually develops between them. Interpersonal change then becomes a measure of success in post-conflict peacebuilding.

Trust Matters A defining characteristic of Nigeria’s oil insurgency was its criminogenic nature. The criminal element of the insurgency posed a significant threat to local communities and oil multinationals alike, but research has shown that the implementation of DDR brought about a reduction in criminal activities across the oil region (Ebiede et al. 2020). Since then, oil workers and local communities have been liberated from the fear that previously pervaded the region because the insurgents who perpetrated these atrocities were transformed into peaceful citizens. These transformations are evident in the resumption of economic activity in an oil region that was once the epicenter of insurgent activities (Newsom 2011). What deserves attention, however, is whether and how the degree of trust in the peace process brought about transformations in the relationship between corporations and communities, and between communities and the military. These transformations were particularly evident in Bayelsa and Rivers States where the presence of federal troops in coastal communities served to reinforce community confidence in the state’s capacity to protect citizens from the threat of insurgency rather than pose a threat to local populations. The development of positive relationships between local communities and the military was founded on trust. The Nigerian government reinforced trust in the peace process when it began to engage the insurgents through non-coercive measures such as DDR, enabling them to return the arms and weapons in their possession and participate in a range of transformative peacebuilding activities. Arguably, the degree of trust in the peace process fostered a positive relationship that encouraged the insurgents to disarm. This relationship was sustained by the confidence that the federal government would

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fulfill the promises made to the insurgents upon their decision to accept amnesty and unconditionally renounce insurgency. The federal government had promised to facilitate economic opportunities for the insurgents through education, vocational skill training, and entrepreneurship. The leaders of the insurgent groups exploited the peace process to negotiate economic incentives for themselves and their foot solders as a condition for peace. While these incentives rewarded some insurgents and marginalized others, what deserves attention is the instrumentality of DDR. My experience interacting with some ex-insurgents revealed that when DDR has an instrumental value, it can provide incentives for postconflict stability. Post-conflict stability is evident in the freedoms people now enjoy in communities that were previously rife with insecurity. Although DDR was successful in transforming the relationship between insurgents and the state, enabling the suspension of criminal atrocities targeting the oil industry, my study found that this effort has been less successful in transforming company-community relations. Fostering positive relationships between communities and oil multinationals is considered a building block to sustainable peace. This is especially true when considering the strategic contribution of the petroleum industry in providing employment opportunities in the local communities. But the lack of synergy between oil multinationals and local communities was obvious in the Ibeno community in Akwa Ibom State. Because insurgency in Ibeno mostly involved passive resistance through street blockades as opposed to armed hostilities as in Rivers and Bayelsa States—considered the epicenters of violent activities—the indigenous elites in Ibeno consistently denied the existence of armed insurgency in their community. While they acknowledged the impact of oil extraction on their environment, particularly from the activities of ExxonMobil, they continue to view their community as “peaceful.” Interestingly, they perceive ExxonMobil as their “glass house.” The term “glass house” is used metaphorically among the elite in the Ibeno community to imply that “those who live in a glass house do not throw stones.” To maintain their status as a “peaceful” community, the indigenes have resolved to engage with ExxonMobil passively. This mostly involves the mobilization of nonviolent protests through street blockades to draw attention to perceived environmental injustices perpetrated by ExxonMobil. They

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also acknowledge the importance of ExxonMobil to the economic development of their community. The relative peace in the Ibeno community was attributed to the unwillingness of Ibeno youth to engage in an armed insurgency targeting ExxonMobil. However, the expectation that ExxonMobil’s location in Ibeno would attract economic development to the indigenes is far from reality. At any rate, the evidence is not reflected in the living conditions of those indigenes who are willing to work but cannot access job opportunities in the oil industry due to discriminatory employment practices by ExxonMobil. It is evident that peace has not been won in the oil region when one looks at the rate of employment discrimination against indigenes, even as community antagonism has mostly been expressed by means of passive resistance as opposed to armed violence. While it is true that company-community relations have improved considerably throughout the oil region, resulting in the reduction of hostilities targeting the oil industry, this success has so far not been able to win peace in the coastal communities. Some analysts believe the peacebuilding program has only been successful in stabilizing security in the oil region to ensure unfettered oil production activities (Ajayi and Adesote 2013). It has been less successful in addressing the structural violence prevailing in the local communities where the oil multinationals are operating.

Measuring Change at the Intrapersonal Level Peacebuilding in Nigeria’s oil region is a complex endeavor that requires analysts to consider the relevance of context when evaluating its success. One major task is to understand how behavior change techniques implemented as part of the DDR program brought about intrapersonal experiences that contributed to the perceived success of post-conflict peacebuilding. My analysis has identified intrapersonal change as a powerful determinant of post-conflict stabilization. I define intrapersonal change as the conscious experiences that lead to positive transformations in the attitudes and behaviors of ex-insurgents. The indicators of change are the new ideas, beliefs, and perspectives that ex-insurgents hold about themselves when comparing their past and present realities. These

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conscious experiences contribute to behavior change by transforming the negative mindset that sees violence as a rational response to injustice. Several factors work together to foster the experience of intrapersonal change. The psychological and educational processes of demobilizing the insurgents have been successful in deprogramming their minds against violent behavior while also raising the consciousness of the principle of nonviolence (Okoi 2020, 5). Conditioning the minds of the exinsurgents to think in relatively new ways has given them new identities as peacemakers and peace ambassadors in their various communities. As Ikelegbe and Umukoro (2016) noted, the DDR program achieved its intended design objective—that of transforming the mindset of the ex-insurgents to prevent a relapse into insurgency. The unwillingness of many ex-insurgents to resume criminal activities in the coastal communities attests to the effectiveness of demobilization activities in behavior change. In this context, the success of DDR is measured against its ability to liberate the minds of ex-insurgents from the burden of violence. More specifically, demobilization was the process through which the peacebuilders achieved significant success in their efforts to transform the negative attitudes that lead to destructive behaviors. As shown in Chapter 2, demobilization aims to break the command structure of armed groups to prevent recidivism (Dobbins et al. 2020; UNIDDRRC 2014; Knight 2008; Ozerdem 2002). Research has shown that once the command structure of rebel groups is broken, their capacity to re-arm and resume rebellion weakens (Alden et al. 2011, 14). The importance of demobilizing armed groups cannot be overemphasized given that societies emerging from armed conflict are often at severe risk of relapsing into war once ex-combatants re-arm to disrupt the peace process (Alden 2002; Spear 2002; Gamba 2003). Research by Williams and Walter (1997) in El Salvador shows that disarmed combatants still have the capacity to disrupt the peace process by resuming hostilities against their adversaries. Demobilization is therefore a crucial determinant of successful peace operations because it enables the achievement of “justice and development” in post-conflict societies (United Nations 2004, 57). In the Nigerian context, the implementation of non-violent strategies as part of DDR activities was instrumental in transforming the ex-insurgents into peace ambassadors in their local communities. The

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peacebuilders adopted the principles of Kingian Nonviolence as a framework for peacebuilding. The Kingian Principles is a philosophy of nonviolent conflict resolution based on Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach to social change. It inspires victims to direct their aggression to the issues of injustice rather than the perpetrators, avoiding physical confrontation with the adversaries and instead embracing them with love. The Kingian Principles hold that the goal is not to defeat our adversaries in combat but to win their understanding. While in the research field, I met with several ex-insurgents who recited repeatedly Principle One, “Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people,” and Principle Four, “Accept suffering without retaliation,” to demonstrate their awareness of nonviolence and to express their unwillingness to resume violence regardless of the degree of suffering they witness. The growing consciousness of nonviolence among the ex-insurgents as expressed through their unwillingness to participate in violent activities that would jeopardize the gains of peace is an important way of evaluating the impact of the transformational training they received during their demobilization. My experience in the research field shows that demilitarization is much more than taking weapons from insurgents. It involves transforming how insurgents perceive and misperceive violence and their relationship with the state and oil multinationals. These perceptions and misperceptions have discouraged many ex-insurgents from engaging in unlawful behaviors that previously defined their identities, such as hostage taking, kidnappings, and attacks on oil and gas infrastructure. Hundreds of insurgents who participated in the DDR program believe the training they received as part of their demobilization transformed them into refined citizens who now detest criminal insurgency. Their transformation has been a source of encouragement to other community youth to engage nonviolent methods of agitating for social justice. In this context, the principles of Kingian Nonviolence serve as a powerful tool for conflict transformation, which has enabled the peacebuilders to demilitarize the mindsets of the insurgents and steer their attitudes and behaviors from negative to positive. In my research, I encountered several ex-insurgents who were remorseful of their past criminal atrocities. It was obvious that intrapersonal change is a product of awareness—that is, the awareness of

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their criminogenic behaviors as former insurgents and their determination to pursue nonviolence as a way of life regardless of the degree of discontentment with the state and oil multinationals. Their decision to transform from being aggressors to gaining a new identity as peace ambassadors proceeds from a place of consciousness. Research by Kyoon-Achan (2013, 79) that compared indigenous approaches to peacemaking among the Inuit and Tiv communities showed that peace is generated from deep within the human psyche and is “a product of the heart.” This understanding gives justification to intrapersonal change as a discovery that traces the roots of peace to a place of consciousness—that internal place deep within that propels individuals to renounce violence and become peace ambassadors. These intrapersonal processes have been instrumental in the stability of the oil region over time and constitute a significant measure of success in post-conflict peacebuilding processes. The concept of intrapersonal change implies that participation in the peacebuilding process brought about significant changes in the personal lives of the ex-insurgents. Within this context, peace is understood as the ability of the ex-insurgents to connect with those aspects of their cognitive experiences that generate internal awareness and, ultimately, transforms their attitude to violent behavior. This concept finds expression in the work of Lederach (2003), who shows how conflict can bring about changes in the personal dimension of human experience. The personal dimension refers to changes effected in an individual or desired for them, which could be spiritual, perceptual, cognitive, or emotional (Lederach 2003). For Lederach, transformation at the personal level is both descriptive and prescriptive. It is descriptive because conflict affects the totality of the individual including their self-esteem, physical wellbeing, emotional stability, spiritual integrity, and sense of perception. It is prescriptive because it includes interventions designed to reduce the destructive effect of conflict or increase its potential for the physical, emotional, and spiritual growth of individuals (Lederach 2003). My argument is that ex-insurgents who have experienced a positive shift in their consciousness aspire toward a higher level of development where nonviolence becomes their new way of life. Once an insurgent gains cognitive experience that generates an internal awareness of how their past actions affected the world around them, it motivates them to

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recycle their frustration in pursuit of nonviolence. Intrapersonal change then becomes the cognitive experience that either changes an individual’s predisposition to violence or generates within them the desire to pursue nonviolence while seeking to address injustice. From this standpoint, I define intrapersonal change as the redemptive experience produced by the recycling of hopelessness in pursuit of peace. At the practical level, the experience of intrapersonal change has transformed some ex-insurgents into peace leaders in their communities, where they leverage their personal experience to educate community youth who might be planning to kidnap people for ransom or destroy oil infrastructure as an attractive means of making easy money. Intrapersonal change is, in this context, a measure of the peacebuilders’ ability to transform the worldviews of the insurgents who now carry out peace education in their communities to promote nonviolent behavior among the youth.

Measuring Change at the Structural Level While reviewing publications of the Presidential Amnesty Program, I came across the profiles of 177 ex-insurgents who have undergone pilot and aviation engineering training in the United Kingdom, Greece, Germany, Jordan, South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates. I was captivated immediately by the profile of Douyi Obirizi. Growing up in a village, Obirizi developed a strong admiration for helicopters and was fascinated by the scientific mystery surrounding these flying objects as they hovered over his neighborhood every morning, afternoon, and evening, transporting oil workers between offshore and onshore locations. Born in a rural community where quality education is a luxury, many youths of his socioeconomic status couldn’t afford, the dream of a flying career could be imagined but almost impossible to achieve. Despite his poverty and through the efforts of his parents, he managed to obtain a university education. But after graduating from university, Obirizi was again languishing in poverty due to the high unemployment rate in his

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village. But when his name appeared among the list of candidates shortlisted for aviation training in Athens, Greece, the cloud of hopelessness that pervaded his experience in the village suddenly disappeared. Initially, the opportunity seemed like a dream; that dream became a reality as he got into the rudiments of professional flying in a highly competitive industry. Rising from the confines of village life, where the trappings of systemic poverty, unemployment, and suffering are interwoven into everyday life, one gets a sense of what it meant for an ex-insurgent of his socioeconomic status to experience real change by training as a commercial pilot. Obirizi’s experience, in many ways, exemplifies the success of the Niger Delta peacebuilding program. His story lent credence to the program’s effectiveness in elevating the socioeconomic status of many ex-insurgents by linking them to local and international opportunities. Not only has this effort been successful in liberating some local ex-insurgents from illiteracy, unemployment, and hopelessness, but it has also given them new identities and completely different personalities as commercial pilots, peace ambassadors, entrepreneurs, professionals, and change agents. These transformations underscore the structural dimensions of post-conflict peacebuilding successes. The structural dimension of peacebuilding refers to the ways DDR programming elevated the socioeconomic status of some ex-insurgents by enhancing their capacity to achieve social mobility. Realizing that the level of hopelessness in the oil region arose primarily from structural conditions that deprived people of access to education, employment, and economic opportunities, the designers of the DDR program emphasized the importance of human capacity development as a fundamental requirement for peace. This included integrating the ex-insurgents into educational and skill building opportunities locally and overseas to enable them to build capacity in their chosen vocations. Conflict theorists such as Burton (1990) have long recognized the importance of human needs as a collection of basic human development essentials that affect social behavior. Because social conflict often develops from unmet human needs, the goal of conflict resolution has been to understand these needs and develop appropriate measures to satisfy them (Burton 1993). It is when these needs are repressed that the struggle to

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satisfy them becomes the motivating factor behind destructive behavior (Rubenstein 2008, 71). As Chapter 5 will demonstrate, the struggle for economic participation has theoretical implications that must be taken into consideration when evaluating the nature of peace. The structural dimension of peacebuilding was evident in the profound transformations in the social and economic status of many exinsurgents who have participated in capacity building training to prepare them for employment. The indicators of success were obvious during graduation ceremonies where the ex-insurgents paraded their graduation gowns or professional aprons marking their transformation from fighting in the creeks to accepting amnesty and participating in the DDR processes that enabled them to emerge as scholars, engineers, commercial pilots, and technicians. Other indications of post-conflict peacebuilding success include the number of small-scale enterprises that have sprung up in the coastal communities, mostly owned and managed by exinsurgents. Many individuals who were motivated by unemployment to join the insurgency and subsequently participated in the peacebuilding program now own businesses in their local communities. Their unwillingness to participate in violent activities anymore is an indicator of success. Arguably, DDR has been instrumental in the development of skilled professionals in the oil region. For example, the ex-insurgents who trained in South Korea gained technical skills in marine technology, pipeline welding, and automobile and electronics technology. Many have developed the capacity to undertake jobs that demand technical aptitude and problem-solving skills. The training also included networking opportunities with Korean corporations like Daewoo and Samsung that operate in Nigeria’s oil region and could be strategic avenues for future employment for those who chose to work in those industries. Unfortunately, while these developments tell the story of many ex-insurgents who benefitted from the various programs designed to facilitate their capacity building through education, skill training, and entrepreneurship thus enabling them to reintegrate into civilian society as contributing members of their communities, these success stories were not replicated in the lives of thousands of ex-insurgents who had been alienated from these transformative peacebuilding opportunities.

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The Rise of Entrepreneurs in the Oil Region On January 10, 2018, I traveled to Nkpor village in Rivers State where I met George, an ex-insurgent who had been featured in government publications as one of the success stories of the peacebuilding program. His story aroused my curiosity and reinforced my desire to visit his community to validate the authenticity of the information I had reviewed in government publications. I first spoke with George over the phone on January 9 when we chatted and set up an interview appointment. I arrived at Nkpor village in the evening. It was my first time meeting face-to-face with an ex-insurgent who had successfully transformed his life into a local entrepreneur. George narrated his experience engaging in combat with the military in the creeks of the Niger Delta, which included kidnapping people and blowing up oil infrastructure. He then spoke about his fish farm and gave me a tour of the farm. I seized the moment to initiate an informal conversation with him concerning his experience as a former insurgent who now operates a successful enterprise courtesy of the peacebuilding program. I realized through my interaction with George that not only did he transform his life because of his decision to disarm, but he had undergone entrepreneurship training in the city of Lagos to build successful entrepreneurial skills in fish farming. George narrated the myriad challenges he faced while trying to set up his fish farm. Initially, OSAPND had promised to purchase land for ex-insurgents who had indicated an interest in agriculture. They later changed that policy and decided instead to provide them with financial resources to lease the land for a year. At the expiration of George’s lease, he received a quit notice from his landlord, which prompted him to approach some hotels in Port Harcourt city to negotiate a loan. He found a hotel that agreed to grant him a loan. His repayment plan was to supply fish to the hotel until the loan was fully paid. After paying off his loans, he decided to reinvest his profits in growing the farm, in addition to purchasing the land from his landlord. At the time I met George, he had a busy life, focused on growing his business, and he had no desire to participate in violence. It was evident the peacebuilding program did facilitate the economic opportunity for ex-insurgents like George, enabling them to overcome

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the socioeconomic inequities that were the primary motivation for insurgency. But George was not the only success story that emerged from the peacebuilding process. I met other local entrepreneurs in Rivers State, such as Uche, who had benefitted from a variety of entrepreneurship training programs designed for ex-insurgents. When I met Uche in 2018, his small-scale enterprise had gained tremendous success to the extent that he was earning the equivalent of US$100 daily from the sale of eggs. Uche had given up insurgency to focus on growing his business and supporting his family. Making economic opportunity accessible to ex-insurgents like Uche, who demonstrated the ability to build smallscale enterprises to meet the needs of local communities, is an important way of measuring success in post-conflict peacebuilding processes. I also recall my interaction with McPrince, another ex-insurgent from Bayelsa State who believed that post-demobilization activities that focused on entrepreneurship development had contributed significantly to the alleviation of poverty and suffering in the oil region. As one of the beneficiaries of the presidential initiative to encourage commercial agriculture among the ex-insurgents, McPrince initiated and grew a successful fish farm. He expressed optimism in the peacebuilding program’s transformative impact. Success in this context is a measure of the ability for the peacebuilding program to lift ex-insurgents from the trappings of unemployment and poverty as they reintegrate into the economic life of society as local entrepreneurs.

Measuring Peacebuilding Success Through Cultural Change One of the memorable experiences I had while interacting with exinsurgents in Rivers State was my meeting with Karimie. He was in his late forties when I met him in January 2018 but had made his first visit to the city in 2015, when OSAPND mandated former insurgents to open bank accounts to facilitate the electronic payment of their monthly stipends. The stories he shared about his experience were fundamental to my understanding of the role that cultural exposure played in post-conflict peacebuilding processes in the oil region.

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Karimie owns a local store in the community that serves as a convenient meeting place for ex-insurgents. They meet regularly to share cigarettes, alcohol, and food or to discuss community affairs. My regular visits with them enabled me to document the impact of the peacebuilding program on cultural change. I observed that participation in peacebuilding processes had exposed many ex-insurgents to life outside the confines of their local communities. There were several other exinsurgents like Karimie who made their first visit to the city through their participation in the peacebuilding program. Their collective experiences revealed the extent that the peacebuilding program has been successful in helping former ex-insurgents from economically and socially isolated communities to integrate into the urban culture, eventually making the decision to resettle in the city. The impact of peacebuilding on cultural change is evaluated against the rise of a new social class in the oil region. The indicators of change include the degree to which cultural exposure has reduced the incentive for violent behavior among ex-insurgents while simultaneously increasing the opportunity cost for peace. According to Lederach (2003), culture plays a powerful role in peacebuilding because it influences the processes of responding to conflict situations.

The Rise of a New Social Class My study shows that post-conflict peacebuilding practices engendered “pull factors” that made rural-urban migration attractive to many exinsurgents who had lived their entire lives in rural communities and had their first experience of urban life through participation in reintegration activities that mostly took place in cities. Thousands of them were flown to Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia, and the Mediterranean region to pursue education and vocational training opportunities that exposed them to new cultural experiences in new milieus. Data from OSAPND shows that thousands of ex-insurgents have been awarded the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship to pursue higher education in 104 universities in twenty-eight countries, including the population studying in local universities. Those ex-insurgents who did not indicate higher education as a priority benefitted from a range

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of capacity building trainings conducted in twenty-two skill centers overseas and nineteen training institutions within Nigeria. These trainings were instrumental in the transformation of former insurgents from the complexities of rural life to the complexities of cultural globalization where they experienced cultural dynamics quite distinct from the everyday realities in their home communities. Rising from the hopelessness that pervaded their experience in rural communities where electricity, good roads, clean water, hospitals, and quality schools are inaccessible, to training in the United Arabs Emirates, the UK, the USA, Malaysia, South Korea, and Canada where they became members of a new social class, was a phenomenal change. Their exposure to urban life, Western education, and new technologies (like social media) gave them cultural capital. Arguably, the development of cultural capital raised the profiles of many ex-insurgents dramatically by giving them new identities as engineers, technicians, and professionals. Those who were exposed to Western education and culture eventually returned to Nigeria as transformed citizens. Bourdieu (1986) developed the concept of cultural capital to analyze how education provides individuals with social mobility—advantages that enable people to achieve a higher status in society. It could be argued that education and training opportunities that exposed the ex-insurgents to urban life were fundamental to the success of post-conflict peacebuilding in the oil region because they elevated the status of many ex-insurgents who otherwise would be languishing in illiteracy and hopelessness in the rural communities where they were born. It is through these transformative processes of peacebuilding that new social classes began to emerge within the ranks of ex-insurgents who had been exposed to Western education, training, and way of life. During a press interview in 2014, former Special Assistant to the Presidential Amnesty Office on media affairs Daniel Alabrah disclosed to those present that training the ex-insurgents overseas had the advantage of exposing them to unfamiliar environments. This strategy, he noted, would enable them to socialize with people outside their immediate environments as a way of integrating with the larger society (Vanguard 2014). The decision to train the ex-insurgents overseas was also in compliance

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with the United Nations Guiding Principle on DDR, which recommends the rehabilitation and reintegration of ex-combatants outside their familiar environment or in foreign locations where specialized training opportunities are readily available. This decision was taken with the expectation that those who eventually return to Nigeria after the completion of their training programs will be joining a new social class. The peacebuilders believed this strategy would make the ex-insurgents unwilling to engage in violent behavior. My interaction with recipients of the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship at Ritman University in Akwa Ibom attests to the importance of cultural exposure through education in behavior change among the ex-insurgents. Research by Augsburger (1992) shows that conflict transformation occurs under three conditions: (1) the process of transformation must lead to a change in attitudes by changing negative perceptions; (2) the process of transformation must lead to behavior change; and (3) there must be an effort to transform the conflict itself by removing incompatibilities between the parties. Augsburger’s conflict transformation provides a framework that can be useful for evaluating the capacity of Nigeria’s peacebuilding program to transform violent behavior in the oil region by removing the insurgents from their communities and integrating them in unfamiliar cultural terrains. For example, the cohort of ex-insurgents who trained in marine technology and electrical installation in South Korea returned to Nigeria with cultural experience that elevated their status in society. This includes the development of technical skills that were previously inaccessible to the ex-insurgents. While traveling from Abuja, Nigeria, to London, England, I met a gentleman in the aircraft who introduced himself as one of the vendors contracted by OSAPND to facilitate the training of hundreds of exinsurgents in South Korea. I seized the moment to engage him in a conversation that lasted the duration of the flight. He was generous with information regarding his experience in South Korea and the success they achieved in developing the capacity of the ex-insurgents in marine technology. The training in South Korea was designed to expose the ex-insurgents to Asian culture and lifestyle with the expectation that the trainees would be returning to Nigeria as well-educated citizens

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who would model positive behavior as they reintegrated into their local communities.

A Model of Transformative Peacebuilding Research by Väyrynen (1991) shows that intractable conflicts may be addressed by transforming the conflict actors, the underlying issues between them, the rules governing their relationships, and the structure of the conflict system. Lederach (2003) developed a conflict transformation model that gives primacy to the role of cultural, relational, and personal factors. Transformation at the personal level underlies changes in the emotional, spiritual, and perceptual issues of a conflict while the relational dimension deals with changes in the interaction and communication between conflict actors. The structural transformation underscores the patterns of decision-making in a conflict system while the cultural level refers to changes in the cultural pattern in responding to conflict (Lederach 2003). Insights from these conflict transformation models provide the framework for developing a new model of transformative peacebuilding. The transformative model in Fig. 3.1 is derived from a systematic evaluation of post-conflict peacebuilding practices in Nigeria’s oil region. The presumptions of the model take into consideration the successes emerging from the various interventions designed to transform the attitudes and behaviors of the insurgents and their relationship with the state, the oil multinationals, and their local communities. In this model, transformative peacebuilding is anchored on four levels of change. The first change process underscores the intrapersonal experiences that propelled ex-insurgents to change their behavior. For a peacebuilding process to be judged as transformational, it must be capable of changing how violent actors think about their actions. Their attitudes must show a radical rejection of violent behavior and a disposition toward building peaceful relationships at the interpersonal level. In the second change process, transformation is understood as the interpersonal experiences that enable positive relationships to develop between ex-insurgents and the state, the oil multinationals, and the local communities where the

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insurgents would return. In the third change process, transformation is a structural experience that proceeds from improvements in the socioeconomic status of the ex-insurgents. The more ex-insurgents experience changes in their well-being, the less likely it is that they will rationalize violence. In the fourth change process, transformation is understood as the cultural experiences that develop from exposing ex-insurgents to external environments where they interact with other worldviews. They can then use their cultural capital for upward mobility and eventually overcome violent behavior. The philosophical rationale behind the transformative peacebuilding model is that conflict transformation begins with self-awareness and progress through an effort to foster positive relationships between adversaries by improving the socioeconomic condition of ex-insurgents as well as exposing them to new cultural environments that increase their social mobility through interaction with other cultures. While this model deals specifically with transformations within the peacebuilding universe in Nigeria’s oil region, the knowledge is consistent with conflict transformation thinking in general and can be adapted to evaluate post-conflict peacebuilding processes in other societal contexts.

Conclusion A range of factors determine whether intractable conflict will be transformed and whether post-conflict societies will experience stability. As noted in Chapter 2, the peacebuilding program was designed to bring about conditions necessary to stabilize the oil region, and the widespread adoption of DDR was the strategy for post-conflict peacebuilding. A decade of implementing peacebuilding interventions was followed by an influx of scholarly work on the peace process, but there has been limited effort to develop parameters for measuring its success. Understanding what constitutes success in a post-conflict peacebuilding context is an important and timely development that deserves scholarly attention. Indeed, the positive transformations that are revealed in the lives of the ex-insurgents at the cultural, interpersonal, structural, and intrapersonal levels have profound implications for post-conflict stabilization.

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The changing attitude of the insurgents and their disposition towards a culture of peace is an indicator of success. It shows that beyond taking arms from insurgents, the search for lasting peace must include interventions that focus on winning the battle within. Transformative peacebuilding was the key to the process of conquering the inner self and propelling the ex-insurgents towards building peaceful relationships at the interpersonal level. This chapter has shown that transformational change is not just an inward experience. It also manifests structurally, through improvements in the socioeconomic well-being of the ex-insurgents; interpersonally, through relationship building between actors to reinforce their confidence in the peace process; and culturally, by exposing ex-insurgents to new cultural experiences. These conceptual ideas form the basis of the transformative peacebuilding model and is a useful resource for evaluating the success of post-conflict peacebuilding. In the chapter that follows, I examine the understudied problem of whether and how DDR programs empower former insurgents and the modalities and forms of empowerment. I show the means by which ex-insurgents can be empowered, its various meanings and instruments, and how this is a central plank of post-conflict peacebuilding. This chapter will also demonstrate the limits of interventions designed to achieve peace by undermining the importance of local context.

References Ajayi, Adegboyega Isaac, and Adesola S. Adesote. 2013. The Gains and Pains of the Amnesty Programme in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, 2007– 2012: A Preliminary Assessment. Journal of Asian and African Studies 48 (4): 506–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909613493607. Ajibola, Iyabobola O. 2015. Nigeria’s Amnesty Program: The Role of Empowerment in Achieving Peace and Development in Post-Conflict Niger Delta. SAGE . https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244015589996. Alden, Chris. 2002. Making Old Soldiers Fade Away: Lessons from Reintegration of Demobilized Soldiers in Mozambique. Security Dialogue 28 (2): 341–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010602033003008.

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Alden, Chris, Monika Thakur, and Mathew Arnold. 2011. Militias and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peace: Silencing the Gun. London, UK: Zed Books. Augsburger, David W. 1992. Conflict Mediation Across Cultures: Pathways and Patterns. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. The Forms of Capital. In Handbook of Theory of Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. John G. Richardson, 241–58. New York, NY: Greenwood Press. ———. 1990. Conflict: Human Needs Theory. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Burton, John W. 1993. Conflict Resolution as a Political Philosophy. In Conflict Resolution Theory and Practice: Integration and Application, ed. Dennis J. D. Sandole and Hugo Van Der Merwe, 55–64. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Cerretti, Josh. 2009. Hurdles to Development: Assessing Development Models in Conflict Settings. Peace and Conflict Review 4 (1). Dobbins, James, Jason H. Campbell, Laurel E. Miller, and S. Rebecca Zimmerman. 2020. DDR in Afghanistan: Disarming, Demobilizing, and Reintegrating Afghan Combatants in Accordance with a Peace Agreement. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Accessed June 16, 2021. https:// www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE343.html. Ebiede, Tarila Marclint, Arnim Langer and Jale Tuson. 2020. Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration: Analysing the Outcomes of Nigeria’s Amnesty Programme. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 9 (1): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.752. Gamba, Virginia. 2003. Managing Violence: Disarmament and Demobilization. In Contemporary Peacemaking: Conflict, Violence and Peace Processes, ed. John Darby and Roger MacGinty, 125–36. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Ikelegbe, Augustine and Nathaniel Umukoro. 2016. The Amnesty Programme and the Resolution of the Niger Delta Crisis: Progress, Challenges and Prognosis. Monograph Series, No. 14. Benin City, Nigeria: Centre for Population and Environmental Development. Knight, Andy W. 2008. Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding in Africa: An Overview. African Security 1 (1): 24–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/19362200802285757. Kyoon-Achan, Grace. 2013. Original Ways: An Exploration of Tiv and Inuit Indigenous Processes of Conflict Resolution and Peacemaking. Ph.D. Thesis. University of Manitoba.

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LeBaron, Michelle. 2002. Bridging Troubled Waters: Conflict Resolution from the Heart. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lederach, John P. 2003. The Little Book of Conflict Transformation. New York, NY: Good Books. Newsom, Chris. 2011. Conflict in the Niger Delta: More Than a Local Affair. United States Institute of Peace. Accessed March 11, 2020. http://www.usip. org/files/resources/Conflict_Niger_Delta.pdf. Okoi, Obasesam. 2020. Peacebuilding and Transformational Change in Nigeria’s Oil Region. Conflict Resolution Quarterly 37 (3): 223–238. https:// doi.org/10.1002/crq.21270. Okonofua, Benjamin A. 2016. The Niger Delta Amnesty Program: The Challenges of Transitioning from Peace Settlements to Long-Term Peace. SAGE Open 6 (2): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016654522. Ozerdem, Alpaslan. 2002. Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Afghanistan. Third World Quarterly 23 (5): 961–75. Accessed June 16, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993398. Rubenstein, Richard E. 2008. Sources. In Conflict: From Analysis to Intervention, 2nd ed., ed. Sandra Cheldelin, Daniel Druckman, and Lisa Fast, 58–70. London, UK: Bloomsbury. Spear, Joanna. 2002. Disarmament and Demobilization. In Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements, ed. Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild and Elizabeth M. Cousens, 141–82. Boulder, CO and London, UK: Lynne Reinner Publishers. United Nations. 2004. A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility. Report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, A/59/565. New York, NY: United Nations. Accessed February 22, 2019. https://www.un.org/ruleoflaw/files/gaA.59.565_En.pdf. United Nations Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Resource Centre (UNIDDRC). 2014. IDDRS-Framework Module 1.10. May 19. Accessed February 25, 2017. http://unddr.org/iddrs/framework. php; http://unddr.org/uploads/documents/IDDRS_1_10_Rev_2014.pdf. Vanguard 2014. Why We Train Ex-Militants Abroad–Amnesty Office, November 5. Accessed March 25, 2017. https://www.vanguardngr.com/ 2014/11/train-ex-militants-abroad-amnesty-office/. Väyrynen, Raimo. 1991. New Directions in Conflict Theory: Conflict Resolution and Conflict Transformation. London, UK: Sage. Williams, Philip, and Knut Walter. 1997. Militarization and Demilitarization in El Salvador’s Transition to Democracy. Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press.

4 Empowerment and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

In 2015, my contact at the Presidential Amnesty Office in Abuja gave me access to official publications of the peacebuilding program in Nigeria’s oil region. The publications featured success stories emerging from the implementation of various “empowerment” programs designed to give the ex-insurgents an economic lifeline, including snapshots of what the peacebuilders considered an exemplary “empowered” ex-insurgent. I used these details to identify some beneficiaries to understand their perception of “empowerment.” Eze was the first ex-insurgent I contacted from the list of beneficiaries, and we agreed to meet in Port-Harcourt city. I introduced myself as a researcher wanting to inquire about his experience in the insurgency and peacebuilding process when suddenly I noticed a change in his countenance. Like many young men, Eze grew up in a community that hosts several oil multinationals, but he could not access employment in the petroleum industry due to lack of education. He admitted to kidnapping and robbing people at gunpoint. But that was his past life. When asked about his perception of “empowerment,” he requested that we travel to his community located forty-five minutes away from the city to see things for myself. I did so, in the company of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 O. Okoi, Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2_4

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my research assistant. We boarded public transit at the Rumuola terminal heading to the Isiokpo community. The presence of military checkpoints along the highway leading to Isiokpo was an indication that I had entered one of the hotspots of insurgent activities. We got off the bus at Isiokpo around 2:00 pm and walked to Eze’s family compound. He introduced me to his brothers who also identified as ex-insurgents. Eze led me on a tour of an empty poultry farm and showed me what “empowerment” looks like in the eyes of the peacebuilders. “You see, sir, I picked up arms to fight so that my life would improve for the better. After disarming, the government decided to empower me with a poultry farm. But the man contracted to set up my empowerment failed me woefully,” he stated. Throughout our conversation, Eze used the term “empowerment” in the context of entrepreneurial initiatives designed to improve the status of ex-insurgents. I noticed that his frustrations grew from the apparent failure of his poultry farm, which left him feeling disempowered. Several ex-insurgents I interviewed in Rivers and Bayelsa States shared similar frustrations. I realized “empowerment” was the common denominator used by both the peacebuilders and the ex-insurgents to appraise the outcome of the peacebuilding program. But the context of “empowerment” was problematic because it engenders some mechanism of power. “Empowerment,” as I uncovered, was a technical tool for structural transformation in the oil region where the peacebuilders were perceived as those who “empower” while the ex-insurgents were mere beneficiaries. My discovery is reflected in the tension between the top-down and bottom-up perceptions of empowerment. In this chapter, I examine the context of empowerment and how its implementation engenders a sense of disempowerment among the exinsurgents. I make the case that the success and failure of post-conflict peacebuilding lie at the heart of DDR design and implementation challenges. I argue that the search for ways to operationalize the impact of post-conflict peacebuilding must move beyond the peacebuilders’ framework to consider the perceptions of the ex-insurgents and their visions of empowerment. Without an approach to empowerment that builds implicitly on the agency of the ex-insurgents in deciding their own sense

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of empowerment, the current peacebuilding framework, which propagates a mechanistic understanding of empowerment based exclusively on technocracy and informed by the worldviews of the peacebuilders, is counterproductive. This chapter develops the concepts of technocratic and ecological empowerment as contrasting worldviews and shows how these concepts develop from top-down and bottom-up peacebuilding processes. Based on these, I analyze the link between power, empowerment, and post-conflict peacebuilding.

The Context of Empowerment The term empowerment has become the Holy Grail in post-conflict peacebuilding practices. A World Bank publication defines empowerment as the process of strengthening people’s “capacity to make choices” without constraint and “to transform those choices into the desired outcomes” (Alsop et al. 2006). For Sen (1985), empowerment is synonymous with freedom—that is, a person’s freedom to achieve a desired goal. As Samman and Santos (2009) noted, real empowerment is the ability of individual and group actors to make purposive choices. This conception of empowerment is defined in terms of human “agency, selfdirection, self-determination, liberation, participation, mobilization, and self-confidence” (Ibrahim and Alkire 2007, 6). For Maschietto (2016), empowerment is understood as the power dynamics that manifest in peacebuilding processes. The common thread binding these definitions is the concept of agency. Adams (2008, xvi) developed one of the most insightful definitions of empowerment, calling it “the capacity of individuals, groups, and communities to take control of their circumstances, exercise power and achieve their own goals or maximize the quality of their lives.” This definition suggests that the process of empowering people should not by any means undermine their agency in decision-making concerning the quality of life they desire individually and collectively. Thus, Adam’s definition brings to light the complexity of peacebuilding in the oil region—the fact that the strategy of empowering the ex-insurgents in purely technocratic ways deprives them of their sense of agency. The

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concept of agency is central to our understanding of the limitations of the technocratic approach to empowerment, including how it generates contrasting notions of empowerment.

Technocratic Empowerment The concept of technocratic empowerment refers to a peacebuilding process that is excessively materialistic in its outlook. Such a process emphasizes technical interventions, such as human capacity development and entrepreneurship, as mechanisms for reintegrating ex-insurgents into civilian society. I developed this concept to capture my experience investigating the peacebuilding process in the oil region. The technocratic mode of peacebuilding has long caught the attention of peacebuilding researchers, although the debate has mostly focused on the failure of international peacebuilding in countries emerging from civil wars. As Ginty (2012) noted, the technocratic turn in peacebuilding is reinforced by the complex mix of structural and proximate factors, so that responses to conflict are pre-determined by their discursive framing by powerful actors. The framing of empowerment as a technocratic program is problematic, particularly when viewed from the Niger Delta peacebuilding context where it generated contrasting experiences that many ex-insurgents perceived as disempowering. The starting point of this discussion would be the handover brief presented by the former Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Kingsley Kuku to his successor Brigadier-General Paul Boroh, in April 2015. The document mentioned empowerment in relation to reintegration activities that included micro-credit, business support, job placement programs, and the development of cooperatives. Research by Ajibola (2015) showed that these reintegration activities were mostly implemented in the context of empowerment. Thus, when it comes to the subject of empowerment, both leaders had different visions. Kuku believed in building the capacity of the ex-insurgents with knowledge and skill sets that they needed to reintegrate into the labor market. He invested in education and vocational training opportunities for the ex-insurgents both locally and overseas.

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When Boroh took over as OSAPND boss in 2015, he realized that thousands of ex-insurgents who had undergone vocational skill training under Kuku’s leadership were redundant. He immediately redirected the focus of the peacebuilding program from foreign scholarship and training to concentrate on the retraining and “empowerment” of those ex-insurgents who were redundant. Under Boro’s leadership, empowerment dominated peacebuilding practices and was mostly defined as the effort to facilitate entrepreneurship opportunities for those ex-insurgents who had undergone entrepreneurship training but were not empowered.

Empowerment in the Context of Entrepreneurship Development A growing body of literature has established the empirical connection between empowerment and entrepreneurship (Henao-Zapata and Peiró 2018; Shingla and Singh 2015; Odahl 2016). While this chapter does not intend to provide an exhaustive review of the entrepreneurship literature, it recognizes, however, that entrepreneurship can potentially serve as a form of empowerment (Odahl 2016). In the context of the Niger Delta peacebuilding process, empowerment involves setting up enterprises for ex-insurgents in trade areas they have identified or that the peacebuilders chose for them. While in the field, I met some ex-insurgents in their convenience stores or local restaurants. These enterprises were set up by the peacebuilders to empower the ex-insurgents and exemplify what the peacebuilders consider as empowerment. One peacebuilder at OSAPND who played an influential role in the peacebuilding process shared what I consider an insightful perspective on what empowerment means to those implementing the DDR program. She defines empowerment as “some commercial activity that provides a source of economic livelihood for the ex-insurgents.” This usually involves building the capacity of the ex-insurgents with entrepreneurial skills before empowering them with business opportunities, such as a local convenience store or a restaurant. To be considered “empowered,” the ex-insurgents underwent training in vocations that OSAPND

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considered a priority for the federal government. Following the completion of the entrepreneurship training, the next stage was to set up small enterprises to give them an economic lifeline. At this stage, they were considered reintegrated into civilian society and participating in their local economies. This form of empowerment transformed the lives of many ex-insurgents in the oil region who now own convenience stores, restaurants, electronic stores, block molding factories, fish farms, and poultry farms. There is, however, an erroneous impression among the peacebuilders that once the ex-insurgents have developed entrepreneurial capacity, they will utilize that knowledge to manage their enterprises successfully. What they ignore is that most of the ex-insurgents faced barriers in managing their enterprises not because they could not apply their entrepreneurial knowledge, but that decisions about the choice of enterprises to be undertaken were imposed on them based on the trade areas that OSAPND considered a priority. For example, some ex-insurgents who indicated an interest in selling cement to serve the construction industry were forced to undertake small-scale farming that did not align with their passion, and they did not do well as entrepreneurs. Also, those who indicated an interest in small-scale farming but were forced to operate convenience stores did not do well. These examples show that entrepreneurship as defined by the peacebuilders did not necessarily translate to the sort of empowerment that the ex-insurgents desired. As Al-Dajani and Marlow (2013) noted, the relationship between empowerment and entrepreneurship is contextualized within an individually focused economic undertaking that is socio-politically situated to subordinate some actors. It is not surprising that those ex-insurgents who were forced to undertake enterprises that were politically situated felt disempowered. While in the field I saw the contrast between the worldviews of ex-insurgents who had been presumably “empowered” with those of the peacebuilders who “empowered” them. I had a memorable experience with Jeff, an ex-insurgent from one of the Kalabari communities in Rivers State who invited me to his community to examine his “empowerment.” Jeff had been “empowered” with block molding equipment, which the peacebuilders thought would jumpstart his success as

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an entrepreneur in the local construction industry. His enterprise had already been featured in government publications as one of the success stories emerging from the peacebuilding program. At the time of my visit, I saw thousands of blocks ready for sale. I thought that the business was running successfully until I started engaging with him on a personal level. In principle, the peacebuilders “empowered” Jeff with the material resources to operate a block molding factory. They also trained him. However, the vendor contracted by OSAPND to establish his “empowerment” purchased dysfunctional block molding equipment that began to malfunction a few weeks after it was delivered to Jeff. Eventually, Jeff opted for the manual block molding technique to sustain his business. But he lost many customers because the process is physically demanding and time-consuming, which cut his production capacity substantially. While his business had been profiled in government publications as a successful enterprise, he did not share the same perspective with the peacebuilders. Instead, he was generally distraught with the nature of “empowerment” that he believed was fraught with corruption. These negative experiences do not, however, undermine some of the program’s positive outcomes. During one of his regular briefings, Brigadier-General Boroh presented a review of his achievements during the first nine months of coordinating the Presidential Amnesty Program (PAP). His presentation indicated that 836 ex-insurgents had been empowered with business starter-packs in cassava production, fish and poultry farming, building, timber, welding and fabrication, cinematography, and fashion in Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa, Ondo, Imo, and Edo States. I have met several ex-insurgents, particularly in Rivers and Bayelsa States, who transformed their “empowerment” into thriving enterprises. To this tiny group of beneficiaries, “empowerment” is understood as a profitoriented economic endeavor. This materialistic disposition to empowerment has been the dominant discourse driving the implementation of the peacebuilding program.

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Human Capacity Development Sustaining a secure climate in the oil region requires proactive efforts to design and implement peacebuilding strategies that minimize the risk of insurgency by helping former insurgents to develop capacity through education and vocational skill training. Research by Ikelegbe and Umukoro (2016, 4) showed that in 2014 alone, OSAPND awarded scholarships to 2,500 ex-insurgents to pursue higher education while 13,000 received vocational training in local and foreign training centers. A review of data from OSAPND’s documentation of its peacebuilding activities and their impact revealed that 13,145 ex-insurgents have accessed various educational and skill training opportunities as of 2015. The data further revealed that many of those who trained overseas eventually secured employment with foreign companies. For example, Samsung Electronics employed fourteen delegates following the successful completion of their training program in mechatronics and welding. An Italian company, Scuola Edile Genovese, employed fortynine delegates on completion of their training in marine mechanics. Proclad Group, a company in the United Arab Emirates, employed fifty delegates on completion of their training in welding and fabrication. In general, 151 delegates got direct employment on completion of their training in mechatronics, electrical installation, underwater welding, oil and gas drilling, and pipeline welding. The impact of the peacebuilding program on human capital development was also evident in the lives of the students I studied at Ritman University in Akwa Ibom State. They were generally gratified by the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship and the opportunities it opened for them. The Presidential Amnesty Scholarship has been quite impactful, particularly for those students from poor and low-income families who could not afford the cost of attending private universities. Data from OSAPND indicated that 2,152 former insurgents have been awarded the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship to study in thirty-two institutions of higher learning across Europe, North America, Asia, and the Caribbean, while 2,723 were studying in thirty-two universities across Nigeria. Yee and Rahman (2019) noted that these success stories underscore the impact of education on human capital development. Education was particularly

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impactful in fostering opportunities that were considered essential for post-conflict peacebuilding. For Ajobola (2015), the fundamental question is whether implementing educational and vocational skill training programs to empower insurgents and consequently redirect their energies into productive endeavors has the potential to bring peace to the oil region. Indeed, removing the ex-insurgents from the creeks and exposing them to offshore environments where they gain knowledge and transferable skills in a variety of vocations was considered by the peacebuilders a form of empowerment that would enhance their capacity to contribute to national development upon their return to the Niger Delta. However, the concern many ex-insurgents raised was that of nepotism in the awarding of foreign scholarships and vocational training opportunities. Many felt these opportunities mostly benefitted candidates with ethnic ties to the peacebuilders or those connected to influential political leaders while those without such connections had to settle for local universities and training centers. As I dug deeper into the reasons for these discrepancies, I realized OSAPND identified the limited opportunities for in-country training in the federal government priority areas as the core reason for training some ex-insurgents overseas.

Why Women’s Representation Matter A potential gap in the Niger Delta peacebuilding literature has been the limited empirical studies dealing specifically with female representation in peacebuilding. A critical concern that emerged during my field work was the peacebuilders’ insensitivity to the reintegration of women. Of the 30,000 registered participants in the nine states, only 822 were women. However, women constitute 2.74% of all peacebuilding participants. Previous studies have shown that societies where women have greater representation are less likely to descend into war. Gizelis (2009) argued that post-conflict peacebuilding efforts are generally successful in societies where women have greater levels of empowerment. Okonofua (2011, 13) analyzed the marginalization of female ex-insurgents in his

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study on the Niger Delta peace process and found that women constituted a small percent of the total number of ex-insurgents because the peacebuilding process was designed to equip men with more reintegration benefits. Previous research showed that in general, female insurgents have limited access to information, skills, employment opportunities, and knowledge (Nillson 2005). My study uncovered the structural tensions in the peacebuilding program to include the fact that women rarely get recognition for their role as fighters, and in most cases, their participation in the insurgency was relegated to the status of “helpers” and “cooks” who were conscripted into the insurgency by their boyfriends. This disparity thrives because female ex-insurgents were not perceived as active agents with fighting capabilities. However, research by Oriola (2016, 466) showed that women participated in the insurgency as perpetrators rather than victims. An important contribution of Oriola’s study is the recognition that most of the female insurgents perceived their roles as antithetical to their gender. Thus, women played a fundamental role in shaping the oil insurgency and constituted a significant source of spiritual reinforcement (Oriola 2012). The limited attention to the reintegration of women constitutes a critical challenge confronting the peacebuilding program. As Amusan (2014) noted, the peacebuilders ignored the fact that women were the object of the insurgency, and that many women became single parents when they lost their husbands to the struggle. Research by Oyewo (2016) shed critical light on the vulnerability of women and girls during the insurgency, particularly how post-conflict reintegration practices marginalized women. Oyewo recognized, however, that this challenge does not undermine the uniqueness of the program, which derives from an internal funding mechanism, and the training of the insurgents beyond the shores of the conflict environment. Other researchers have dismissed the perceived success of the peacebuilding program on the basis that “it fails to address the plight of women and girls” (Amusan 2014, 5928). In contextualizing the impact of post-conflict peacebuilding practices with regards to notions of empowerment, the status of women deserves attention. How female ex-insurgents experienced the peace process and

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its benefits and opportunities in relation to male ex-insurgents, is a critical determinant of progress toward sustainable peace in the oil region.

The Unintended Consequences of Technocratic Peacebuilding Traveling across the oil region, I met numerous ex-insurgents who received training in a variety of skills and vocations in the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, South Africa, and Malaysia. They returned to Nigeria upon completion of their training overseas but faced employment discrimination in the petroleum industry where their skills are mostly needed. The oil corporations refused to recognize these certifications because the training was either sub-standard or incompatible with their standards. Those who had undertaken professional training in marine welding and marine technology were mostly affected by these discriminatory employment practices. The lack of opportunities to put their practical skills to work has fostered a sense of disempowerment among the ex-insurgents. The incontestable fact is, empowering former insurgents with technical skills without creating job opportunities for them to harness these skills has produced an army of trained ex-insurgents who feel disempowered and are distrustful of the very program that was created to address the unemployment challenge that motivated them to join insurgency in the first place. Eventually, many have deployed these technical skills in illegal oil refining activities, which give them access to informal employment and a source of income. The technocratic approach to peacebuilding is also evident in the deployment of 177 delegates to South Africa, England, Greece, Jordan, Germany, and the United Arab Emirates for pilot and aviation maintenance engineering training; sixty-three of these participants were certified as commercial pilot license holders. While these training opportunities were indispensable for achieving the government’s strategic objectives, this technical enterprise might not be translating into employment in the aviation industry. These concerns became obvious during a press conference when the former OSAPND boss Brigadier-General Boroh

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briefed newsmen in 2015, reporting that 120 ex-insurgents who had received pilot training abroad were unemployable (Suleiman 2015). The question is whether training ex-insurgents to fly airplanes necessarily translates into employment as commercial pilots. Perhaps the peacebuilders ignored the risk of sending ex-insurgents overseas to train as commercial pilots given their past involvement in criminal activities that included kidnapping and hostage taking. Indeed the competition in the Nigerian aviation industry means not every ex-insurgent who trains as a pilot will be hired to fly a commercial airplane. The inability to harness the full potential of the technical labor force reveals one of the critical challenges of the technocratic peacebuilding approach. The technocratic approach to peacebuilding also ignores the environmental context of peacemaking. The government’s push to integrate the ex-insurgents into the agricultural sector through cassava farming ignored the effect of oil pollution on agricultural lands and water resources in those communities where the ex-insurgents come from. Given the multi-dimensional context of the insurgency and the growing concerns over environmental justice, any empowerment process that accords less attention to the environmental context is less likely to sustain peace and development in the oil region (Ajibola 2015). According to Agbiboa (2013), the failure of the peacebuilding program to tackle the environmental challenges in the oil region is a serious issue that cannot be ignored. Further, the peacebuilders’ inability to engage the exinsurgents in defining their vision of empowerment has revived interest in an ecological approach of empowermentthat considers the importance of local knowledge as a resource for peacebuilding. I coin the term ecological empowerment to give expression to the communitarian visions expressed by the ex-insurgents concerning their perceptions of empowerment. It represents a viable alternative to the technocratic approach because it derives empowerment from the perspectives of the empowerees.

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The Ecological Approach to Empowerment Research by Donais (2009) outlined liberal and communitarian forms of peacebuilding as two readily distinguishable visions with significantly contrasting assumptions regarding the role that local actors play in post-conflict peacebuilding processes. Liberal peacebuilding represents a top-down effort to transform post-conflict societies into liberal democracies seen as “the most secure foundation for sustainable peace.” In contrast, “communitarian peacebuilding” represents a bottom-up vision of peacebuilding commonly associated with John Paul Lederach (Donais 2009, 5–6). According to Paris (2002, 628), the liberal peace philosophy “sees peacebuilding as an effort to bring post-war societies into conformity with the international system’s prevailing standards of domestic governance.” Unlike liberal peacebuilding, which imposes a universal governance template on post-conflict societies, “peacebuilding communitarians uphold the rights” of societies emerging from conflict to decide their destinies (Donais 2009, 6). As Bush (1996, 86) noted, the challenge of post-conflict peacebuilding is “to nurture and create the social, economic and political space within which local actors can identify, develop, and employ the resources required to build a peaceful, just, and prosperous society.” From this perspective, communitarian peacebuilding stresses the importance of deriving peace from the cultural resources of those affected by war. While Nigeria’s peacebuilding program was designed in conformity with the liberal peacebuilding framework, the perspectives expressed by the ex-insurgents and their ideas of empowerment correspond to the communitarian vision of peacebuilding, which derives its theoretical roots from Lederach’s conflict transformation thinking. Lederach (1995) described conflict as a socially constructed event that is rooted in culture. As such, peacebuilding is derived from cultural knowledge of experience. This means how communities experience conflict and how they construct their experience of peacebuilding differs across cultures. While Lederach has made an impressive attempt to communicate a bottom-up approach to peacebuilding that is emancipatory and resonates with the perspectives of local people, his conception of empowerment has theoretical limitations. First, Lederach’s conception of “social empowerment”

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seems less of an “emancipatory” peacebuilding approach when examined against the social complexities in post-conflict societies such as Nigeria’s oil region. Second, Lederach fails to contextualize the nature of communitarianism and what community means in a peacebuilding context where armed groups also present themselves as a community both in the ways they construct their grievances and in peace negotiations. The idea of ecological empowerment suggests that peacebuilders must recognize cultural knowledge as a resource for post-conflict peacebuilding. Such a recognition will inform the implementation of culturally sensitive empowerment programs that build on community resources. This will help post-conflict communities to transform their resources into sustainable opportunities. In this context, empowerment is understood as a bottom-up approach to peacebuilding derived from people’s ability to maximize their agency in exploring peaceful solutions to their problems by utilizing the resources within their local ecosystems. In other words, the concept of ecological empowerment suggests that people must derive their sense of empowerment from their inherent abilities to explore solutions to their problems using local resources and talents. It is a model of peacebuilding that considers the importance of harnessing the full range of capital within post-conflict communities as a resource for their emancipation. Capital, in this context, implies a combination of economic, social, and cultural resources that enable ex-insurgents to invent community-oriented solutions that are culturally sensitive and environmentally sustainable. Only then will exinsurgents fully reintegrate economically as contributing members of their communities. Although reintegration programs in post-conflict societies have traditionally focused on enhancing the economic well-being of ex-insurgents, research has shown that effective reintegration must facilitate the social integration of ex-insurgents, in addition to the economic considerations (Alden et al. 2011). So far, the numerous ex-insurgents deployed to Malaysia, South Korea, UAE, North America, and Great Britain for education and professional training did not reintegrate into their local communities in Nigeria where their knowledge and skill would be useful to the local economy. Instead, they chose to reintegrate into foreign

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societies and deploy their knowledge and skills to develop those societies. Those who eventually returned to settle in Nigeria abandoned the rural communities to resettle in the cities where they could easily access employment. This challenge reveals a fundamental weakness of Nigeria’s peacebuilding program. As Knight (2008, 29) noted, “sustained reintegration” occurs when ex-insurgents become productive members of their communities. In other words, the reintegration of ex-insurgents into “productive civilian life” is a key to post-conflict security and recovery (Ferguson 2010, 152). However, effective reintegration must be anchored on efforts to provide employment opportunities for the ex-insurgents after they complete their training (Ajibola 2015). When designing transformative peacebuilding activities that can be useful for addressing insurgency, it is important that the peacebuilders recognize the cultural resources within the environments where the insurgents come from as vital to the process of transformation. Such recognition will ensure that interventions that are designed to empower ex-insurgents economically do not marginalize local priorities.

Power and Empowerment The contrasting visions of empowerment presented in this chapter call attention to the power dynamics that underlie post-conflict peacebuilding processes. The technocratic model of empowerment represents a materialistic medium of peacebuilding that defines the power relations between the peacebuilders and the ex-insurgents. These power dynamics control how the ex-insurgents think about the solutions to their problems, making them adjust to the peacebuilders’ image of “an empowered life” and eventually inhibiting their capacity to define their own sense of empowerment in culturally appropriate ways. The problem with technocratic empowerment is that many exinsurgents are usually not inclined to do well in the kinds of entrepreneurial choices presented to them by the peacebuilders. These choices are mostly imposed against their will, undermining their aptitude and cultural experience. This contrasts with the ecological approach, which recognizes the agency of the ex-insurgents and the fact

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that empowerment cannot be imposed on people as pre-determined solutions. This does not, however, ignore the fact that in general, sustainable conflict resolution requires economic empowerment (Byrne 2010). Nevertheless, the general feeling of disempowerment among exinsurgentsin Nigeria’s oil region raises concerns about the importance attached to agency and whether the nature of empowerment being promoted by the peacebuilders is such that allows them to make choices that may lie outside their own priorities. The struggle over agency was a hallmark of my experience at the Refresher Training Course on Cassava Processing/Fish Farming and Entrepreneurship in Calabar city, organized for ex-insurgents from Rivers and Bayelsa between January 16–19, 2018. I witnessed firsthand the tension between the peacebuilders’ discourse and the perspectives of ex-insurgents who reside in the coastal communities and have a radically different understanding of the kind of empowerment they believe is feasible given the environmental conditions in their communities. I observed that empowerment processes that focused on promoting entrepreneurship through cassava production ignored the fact that the soil conditions in those rural communities may not support cassava production because of the pollution. The ex-insurgents who were lackadaisical about the cassava training felt that training them in fish farming would empower them to maximize their experience in fisheries, which is a lucrative industry in the coastal communities when undertaken on a commercial scale. Their attitudes seemed to suggest that the peacebuilders were imposing the cassava training against their will while denying them the opportunity to make their own choices regarding the type of empowerment they considered feasible in their coastal communities. Also, my field observation revealed that the consultants hired to train the ex-insurgents in cassava farming did not have practical experience in farming. As such, the training focused on the theoretical aspects of cassava farming and entrepreneurship and less on the actual practice of cassava farming in the local communities. The ex-insurgents were drawn from rural communities where agriculture is the mainstay, and therefore, they possessed knowledge of local conditions. However, the consultants

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did not recognize the importance of the local experience and knowledge that the insurgents brought as a resource for learning and discovery. Instead, they focused on depositing technical knowledge on them rather than blending technical ideas with culturally appropriate knowledge on cassava production, informed by the views of the ex-insurgents. I recall one ex-insurgent who told me, “I don’t have land to plant cassava, so the training is not useful to me because I will not be able to put the knowledge to practice. I would prefer training in fish farming because we have rivers.” It is evident the peacebuilders completely ignored regional dynamics and the fact that the local environments in oil communities are not cassava-friendly due to pollution. Training ex-insurgents on cassava farming would be meaningless without including efforts to remediate the local environment to support agricultural productivity. While not dismissing the success achieved through the various empowerment programs, I observed a disconnect between the peacebuilders’ policy focus on using agriculture to drive the empowerment process and the actual priorities of the ex-insurgents. The power dynamics also manifested in the mode of empowerment training. Although the empowerment training was designed to help the ex-insurgents understand the process of transforming cassava into different entrepreneurial ventures, the knowledge was transmitted using technical language, regardless of the literacy level of the recipients. Some ex-insurgents, deficient in their ability to comprehend and translate the technical information into culturally appropriate entrepreneurial models, began to resist the training as irrelevant to their socioeconomic wellbeing. This observation was important because the ex-insurgents who participated in the training possessed similar characteristics with those I met in Rivers and Bayelsa States in terms of their literacy levels and communication, exposure, and cognitive abilities. They all demonstrated proficiency in Pidgin and their native languages but lacked English language proficiency, which is the official language used in the training. Lederach (1995) described this “prescriptive model” of training as the transfer of technical knowledge to subjects. He distinguishes it from the “elicitive model,” which represents a bottom-up approach and a source of discovery that does not rely on expert knowledge and the application

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of universal standards but relationship transformation (Lederach 1995, 64). What ignited my curiosity the most was the discovery that more than 95% of the participants in the training course could barely read and write in English. This discovery further exposed the level of illiteracy in the coastal communities and the importance of engaging the ex-insurgents in designing suitable and culturally appropriate interventions that take into consideration their level of intellectual development, as well as the environmental conditions in the communities where they reside. The power dynamics sustaining the technocratic approach to empowerment leads to what Freire (1970, 47) refers to as “self-depreciation,” a situation whereby the oppressed adopt the dominant thinking of their oppressors due to the fear of liberating themselves. These dynamics lead to feelings of disempowerment, and the ex-insurgents are made to think less of their agency, cultural knowledge, and experience. As one ex-insurgent put it, “The main problem with the peacebuilding program is that the top does not connect with the bottom.” What this means is that the peacebuilders have chosen to impose empowerment on the ex-insurgents rather than engage them in designing appropriate solutions to their problems.

Conclusion This chapter has shown that empowerment emerged as a fundamental element of post-conflict peacebuilding processes in Nigeria’s oil region. Because development was identified as a substantial requirement for sustainable peace, it may well be the case that effective peacebuilding requires the investment of material resources in programs that have the potential to elevate the economic status of the ex-insurgents. For the peacebuilders, empowerment proceeds through technocratic, vertically integrated interventions, such as skill training and entrepreneurial activities, to give the ex-insurgents an economic lifeline. It is assumed that these interventions may motivate them to pursue peace. But the nature of empowerment is such that the beneficial effects expected from it as catalysts for peace are defined by the peacebuilders.

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If empowerment is indeed a pre-requisite to successful peacebuilding in the oil region, then the debate around the nature of empowerment, its manifestation, impact, and consequences to date may need to proceed beyond technocratic practices such as entrepreneurship and human capital development. The ecological approach to empowermentemphasizes a communitarian vision that considers the knowledge and cultural resources of those affected by conflict as catalysts for sustainable peace. It seems, from the various perspectives, that the ex-insurgents and the peacebuilders are talking about different things when referring to empowerment. This understanding leaves us with the question of what empowerment really means in the context of the Niger Delta peacebuilding process. If one could conclude by merely listening to the opinions of the ex-insurgents, it would be evident that many empowerment programs advertised by the peacebuilders as success stories are not entirely successful. Instead, there is a pervasive sense of disempowerment expressed by ex-insurgents whose needs have not been met through the technocratic processes of empowering them, and who attribute the failure of the peacebuilding process to challenges that are entirely political. Concerns about the status of women who mostly receive less reintegration benefits and training opportunities compared to male exinsurgents raises equally important challenges that reveal the limitations of technocratic empowerment. This chapter has argued that the search for new ways to operationalize the impact of empowerment as a catalyst for post-conflict peacebuilding must move beyond the peacebuilders’ framework to consider the visions of the ex-insurgents. The challenge is not the ability of the government to invest resources on empowerment but the limited analysis of the nature of empowerment and how it reinforces power relations between the peacebuilders and the ex-insurgents. This chapter moves beyond understanding the technocratic concept of empowerment to articulating an ecological approach to empowerment and shows the implications of these conceptual models in understanding the positive and negative impacts of the peacebuilding program. In other words, the dynamics through which peacebuilding practices produce and reproduce—or configure and reconfigure—power relations are at best understood through the technocratic and ecological models of empowerment.

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Unlike the technocratic model, the ecological model is more transformative, ensuring that reintegration processes consider the agency of the ex-insurgents. In the next chapter, I will examine the conditions that encourage or discourage conflict escalation and de-escalation in the oil region and how this feeds back to concerns about disempowerment.

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Donais, Timothy. 2009. Empowerment or Imposition? Dilemmas of Local Ownership in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding Processes. Peace and Change 34 (1): 3–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0130.2009.00531.x. Ferguson, Neill. 2010. Disarmament, Demobilization, Reinsertion and Reintegration: The Northern Ireland Experience. In Post-Conflict Reconstruction, ed. Neil Ferguson, 151–64. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Freire, Paulo. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York, NY: Herder and Herder. Ginty, Roger Mac. 2012. Routine Peace: Technocracy and Peacebuilding. Cooperation and Conflict 47 (3): 287–308. https://doi.org/10.1177/001083671 2444825. Gizelis, Theodora-Ismene. 2009. Gender Empowerment and United Nations Peacebuilding. Journal of Peace Research 46 (4): 505–23. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0022343309334576. Henao-Zapata, Daniel, and Jose M. Peiró. 2018. The Importance of Empowerment in Entrepreneurship. In Inside the Mind of the Entrepreneur: Cognition, Personality Traits, Intention, and Gender Behavior (Contributions to Management Science), ed. A. Tur Porcar and D. Ribeiro Soriano, 185–206. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Ibrahim, Solava, and Sabine Alkire. 2007. Agency and Empowerment: A Proposal for Internationally Comparable Indicators. Oxford Development Studies. OPHI Working Paper Series. Accessed August 20, 2018. https:// www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/OPHI-wp04.pdf. Ikelegbe, Augustine, and Nathaniel Umukoro. 2016. The Amnesty Programme and the Resolution of the Niger Delta Crisis: Progress, Challenges and Prognosis. Monograph Series No. 14. Benin City, Nigeria: Centre for Population and Environmental Development. Knight, Andy W. 2008. Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding in Africa: An Overview. African Security 1 (1): 24–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/19362200802285757. Lederach, John Paul. 1995. Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures. New York, NY: Syracuse University Press. Maschietto, Roberta Holanda. 2016. Beyond Peacebuilding: The Challenges of Empoweement Promotion in Mozambique. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Nillson, Anders. 2005. Reintegrating Ex-Combatants in Post-Conflict Societies. SIDA. Accessed May 19, 2020. http://www.pcr.uu.se/digitalAssets/ 67/c_67211-l_1-k_sida4715en_ex_combatants.pdf. Odahl, Charlynn. 2016. Entrepreneurship as Empowerment: How Women are Redefining Work. PhD dissertation. DePaul University.

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Okonofua, Benjamin A. 2011. Paths to Peacebuilding: Amnesty and the Niger Delta Violence. PhD dissertation. Georgia State University. Oriola, Temitope. 2012. The Delta Creeks, Women’s Engagement, and Nigeria’s Oil Insurgency. British Journal of Criminology 52 (3): 534–55. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azs009. Oriola, Temitope. 2016. “I Acted Like a Man”: Exploring Female ExInsurgents’ Narratives About Nigeria’s Oil Insurgency. Review of African Political Economy 43 (149): 451–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244. 2016.1182013. Oyewo, Hussain T. 2016. Nigeria: The Challenges of Reintegrating Niger Delta Militants.Conflict Studies Quarterly 17: 57–72. Accessed March 12, 2018. http://www.csq.ro/wp-content/uploads/Hussain-Taofik-OYEWO.pdf. Paris, Roland. 2002. International Peacebuilding and the “Mission Civilisatrice.” Review of International Studies 28 (4): 637–56. https://doi.org/10. 1017/S026021050200637X. Samman, Emma, and Maria Emma Santos. 2009. Agency and Empowerment: A Review of Concepts, Indicators and Empirical Evidence. Oxford Development Studies. OPHI Working Paper. Accessed August 20, 2018. http:// www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/OPHI-RP-10a.pdf. Sen, Amartyr K. 1985. Well-being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures. Journal of Philosophy 82 (4): 169–221. Shingla, Prabha, and Meera Singh. 2015. Women Empowerment through Entrepreneurship Development. Studies on Home and Community Science 9 (1): 27–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/09737189.2015.11885429. Suleiman, Mustapha. 2015. 120 Ex-militants Trained as Pilots Unemployable. Daily Trust, August 24. Accessed August 25, 2018. http://www.dailyt rust.com.ng/news/general/120-ex-militants-trained-as-pilots-unemployableboroh/160083.html?platform=hootsuite#cBvPsHHcr4ACQmxE.99. Yee, Wendy Mie Tien and Serina Rahman. 2019. Empowerment for Economic and Human Capital Development Through Education. In ASEAN Post-50, ed. A. Idris and N. Kamaruddin, 81–99. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8043-3_5.

Part II The Collapse and Revival of the Niger Delta Peace Process

5 The Changing Landscape of Oil Insurgency

A vast and growing body of research has compiled evidence in support of the central role that natural resources play in Nigeria’s oil insurgency (Sagay 2008; Frankel 2010; Adunbi 2015; Peter and Ocheni 2015; Osaghae 2015; Eregha and Mesagan 2016). The debate on the drivers of insurgency has mostly emphasized such factors as colonial legacy (Fleshman 2002; Ikelegbe 2005; Idemudia 2009), environmental justice (Jike 2004; Okonta 2005; Idemudia and Ite 2006; Elum et al. 2016), and economic opportunism (Omeje 2005). Efforts to broaden the theoretical contours of this debate have linked the insurgency to the longstanding marginalization of minorities (Obi 2009; Idemudia 2009; Arowosegbe 2009; Akpan 2014; Folami 2017). A consensus is emerging that the oil insurgency is draped in organized criminal activities that pose a significant threat to Nigeria’s economy (Watts 2005; Asuni 2009; Krepinevic 2009; Ukiwo 2015; Gaffey 2016; Amaize and Brisibe 2016). While these perspectives are partially accurate, they do not help us to understand how post-conflict peacebuilding practices contribute to the pattern of conflict escalation in the oil region. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 O. Okoi, Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2_5

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This chapter raises the debate on Nigeria’s oil insurgency to a new level of analysis that considers how factors such as exclusion, retribution, and perceived failures in peacebuilding design and implementation contribute to patterns of conflict escalation. At the core of this chapter is the central question: Why did the Niger Delta peace process collapse at repeated intervals over its life cycle? This question is important when considering the federal government’s efforts to disarm the insurgents and build their capacity as the main ingredients that would guarantee the success of this revolutionary peacebuilding program. In addressing this question, this chapter will first analyze the conditions that encourage conflict escalation in the oil region. Second, it will examine what motivates identity groups to resume violence specifically targeting the oil industry while a peace process is in place. Third, it will examine the conditions likely to encourage future insurgency in the oil region.

Understanding the Dynamics of Conflict Escalation Explanations of Nigeria’s oil insurgency are crystallized around root causes and proximate causes. According to Idemudia and Ite (2006), arguments about root causes emphasize the political and economic motivations for the insurgency, while proximate causes focus on environmental and social factors. The 2006 United Nation’s Development Programme (UNDP) report vividly captures the experiences of youth insurgents who identified underdevelopment and poverty as their motivations for joining the insurgency. These concerns have been amplified by studies that show how economic marginalization has been a source of discontent in the oil region (Idemudia 2009; Akpan 2014) along with disparities in the distribution of the revenues derived from natural resources (Folami 2017). According to Ebiede (2017), insurgency manifests as a contest between local elites over the control of natural resources. Other studies have emphasized the crisis of unemployment as a determinant of conflict escalation (Ikelegbe 2006; Idemudia and Ite 2006;

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Evans and Kelikume 2019). This study makes the case that unemployment is not an isolated experience but derives from the failure of the peace process over the past several decades. While in the field, I interacted with ex-insurgents who cited unemployment as the reason for participating in the insurgency. A particular case involves a young man known as Bestmann, who stated unequivocally that he joined the insurgency because he needed to finance his education, but he couldn’t find a job. Joining insurgency gave him access to income through illegal activities such as oil theft and kidnapping. While he did express remorse over the atrocities he committed, he felt that unemployment left him with limited choices. At the time of this research, Bestmann was in his early thirties, had no high school education, and could barely read and write. In Chapter 4, I drew attention to discriminatory employment practices by oil multinationals operating in the oil region. These practices extend to youth in the local communities who have neither education nor possess the technical skills often required to work in the oil companies. Because the labor force is predominantly unskilled and the literacy level is low, companies capitalize on these deficiencies to deny indigenes of the oil region employment opportunities. As grievances build up, community youth who perceive that employment opportunities that should be reserved for them are redirected to benefit “outsiders” eventually mobilize to protest these unjust practices. Conflict arises in part from these discriminatory employment practices. Figure 5.1 is a schematic representation of the dynamics of conflict escalation in the oil region. The dotted lines touching the vertical axis and the horizontal axis from the origin (points O– A) indicate that insurgency originates from structural factors that operate invisibly yet have consequences for human suffering in the oil region. Structures such as oil pollution and denial of employment opportunities are perceived as harmful to local populations because they constrain people’s ability to realize their full potential. Point A indicates that resistance to injustice was initially conducted peacefully by means of nonviolent protests. These protests escalated into full-blown insurgency that continued over a given period and eventually de-escalated at B when the government granted

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A O

B Time

Fig. 5.1 A model of conflict escalation in the Niger Delta

amnesty to insurgents in 2009 to create the conditions for stabilizing the oil region.

The Revival of Insurgency The collapse of the Niger Delta peace process in 2016 revived questions about the conditions that motivate insurgent groups, at different intervals, to resume hostilities amidst the implementation of a peacebuilding program that is believed to have been successful in stabilizing the oil region. My study traced the dynamics of conflict escalation to factors such as exclusion, retribution, and perceived failures in peacebuilding design and implementation.

Why Exclusion Matter The peace process that began in 2009 gave rise to great optimism that granting amnesty to insurgents followed by the implementation of a robust DDR program brought stability to the oil region. A few years later, the peace process collapsed. One explanation for the collapse of the peace process was that the process of rewarding the insurgents to be peaceful manifested in patterns of exclusion. The revival of insurgency

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after 2009 was due to the government’s initial refusal to incorporate the so-called “Third Phase Militants” into the peace process. According to Odiegwu (2012), the “Third Phase Militants” are a group of insurgents who claimed to have been granted amnesty in 2009 and thus surrendered their arms and ammunition to the government. However, they refused to participate in the demobilization program for fear of being prosecuted. They later re-armed and resumed hostilities targeting oil and gas infrastructure, claiming they had been left out of the economic benefits of peacebuilding following disarmament. As Oyadongo (2012) noted, this group of actors emerged on the premise that the federal government deliberately excluded them from the financial incentives attached to the peace process, and they claimed responsibility for various atrocities in the oil region between 2009 and 2012. The wave of insurgency that occurred in 2012, mostly linked to the activities of “Third Phase Militants,” suggests that many insurgents in local communities who claimed to have disarmed were still in possession of small arms and weapons, which they mobilized at frequent intervals to attack petroleum infrastructure. Moreover, the peacebuilding program rewarded lawbreakers with incentives, such as the payment of a monthly allowance greater than the national minimum wage for legitimate government workers, and sent them overseas for skills training. It also supported them with capital to start small-scale enterprises. Meanwhile, it overlooked the suffering of non-insurgents, and this realization set the stage for the revival of a new wave of insurgency. Ikelegbe and Umukoro (2016) examined how exclusionary practices that characterized the design and implementation of the DDR program affected peacebuilding outcomes in the Niger Delta. They argued that the government’s commitment to the peace process ignored a sound programmatic mechanism that would provide the inclusionary basis for demobilizing and reintegrating the ex-insurgents (Ikelegbe and Umukoro 2016). Other researchers have expressed concerns that the exclusive focus on improving the well-being of the insurgents overlooked the victims of the insurgency who were kidnapped, raped, or violated by the insurgents (Akinwale 2010, 204). As Davidheiser and Nyiayaana (2011, 57–58) noted, bypassing the non-insurgents “fueled a widespread belief among Nigerians that their government only responds to lawbreakers as opposed

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to law-abiding citizens.” The DDR program thus represented an incoherent and fundamentally flawed peacebuilding strategy that neglected the insecurities of individuals who did not participate in the insurgency but were negatively impacted by the activities of insurgents. Recent developments in the oil region have revived concerns about the state of instability. One of the C-Suite management staff at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) that I interviewed under conditions of anonymity was alarmed by the state of insecurity in the oil region. He believed that the activities of insurgents who mobilize arms and explosives to blow up oil pipelines or go rampaging and kidnapping migrant workers had dropped drastically. But while the overall stability in the area has improved, ironically, other violent activities continue to crop up in the oil region. These actions are seen by some as desperate last attempts by political elites who mobilize various gangs against one another for their own reasons. This form of instability as implied is twodimensional. On the one hand, it represents acts of violence perpetrated by insurgents for which an amnesty was warranted. On the other hand, it represents new acts of violence perpetrated by gangs at the behest of political elites. Interestingly, subnational governments in the oil region—for example, Rivers State—have begun to implement independent amnesty programs to address insecurities arising from the prevalence of gang violence. Rivers State was an innovator in local government efforts to combat instability arising from gang violence using amnesty as a mechanism. Over 20,000 members of different gangs and their leaders in Rivers surrendered their arms to the state government in November 2016 and enlisted in the amnesty program. Thousands of arms, ammunitions, and explosives were recovered (Channels Television 2016). This regional amnesty program exposed the failure of the federal government’s peacebuilding program to successfully disarm the civilian population of possession of small arms and light weapons.

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Political Retribution The emergence of the NDA in February 2016 was a defining moment in the history of Nigeria’s oil insurgency. The NDA launched a violent campaign encapsulated in the catchphrase “Operation Red Economy” in which it announced its intent to cripple Nigeria’s economy by targeting oil infrastructure (Ewokor 2016). The “Operation Red Economy” campaign also expressed the group’s discontent with President Buhari’s perceived selective anti-corruption war, which deliberately targeted the opposition, particularly political elites sympathetic to his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan. While the NDA had distinguished themselves from previous insurgent groups by refusing to engage in kidnapping activities, the ex-insurgents I interviewed refused to recognize the group’s mode of insurgency as altruistic. They believed political elites from the oil region sponsored the NDA to de-legitimize Buhari’s presidency in the same way the Boko Haram Islamist group unleashed terror on the nation to de-legitimize Jonathan’s administration because of his minority ethnic background. I argue that insurgency manifests as political retribution as politically vulnerable groups mobilized revenge as a response to historical injustices committed against them. For example, during the “Operation Red Economy” declaration, the NDA gave President Buhari a two-week ultimatum to implement the report of the 2014 national Confab (the gathering of Nigerians representing various constituencies to deliberate solutions for national restructuring) commissioned by President Jonathan. Their demands included a call for the remediation of endangered ecosystems in the oil region and continued funding of the peacebuilding program. In addition, Buhari was asked to apologize for the murder of a prominent political leader from the Ijaw ethnic nation, Chief D.S.P. Alamieyesegha, and they demanded the unconditional release of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu, among others. While some of these conditions appealed to longstanding social justice concerns, the political construction of the insurgency as a vengeful mission suggests that the struggle accorded greater priority to political retribution than to social justice concerns. Moreover, the geopolitical construction of the

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NDA raises critical concerns as its conditions extended beyond the original sites of struggle in the south to include secessionist struggles in the east championed by the IPOB. These struggles were believed to be politically motivated and had little or nothing to do with the ecological and social justice struggles in the oil region. Regardless, the NDA insurgency had a debilitating effect on Nigeria’s economy as crude oil production dropped by 50% by May 2016. This period also coincided with the fall of oil prices from US$50 in 2015 to $US40 by 2016. While the impact of the insurgency forced the federal government to negotiate a ceasefire, the negative signals on the nation’s economy suggested that the NDA had achieved its “Operation Red Economy” campaign objective, which was to sabotage the nation’s economy. Two types of political elites were implicated in the insurgency. The first were leaders of the various insurgent groups who because of their participation in violence and the peace process, transitioned into government contractors, eventually amassing material wealth that reinforced their influence in the oil region and national political circles. The second were political elites who grew their power base by funding armed groups who perpetrated atrocities ranging from political kidnappings to the bombing of oil and gas infrastructures. A growing body of research attributed the revival of insurgency to President Buhari’s May 2015 inauguration speech when he announced his plans to cut funding for the peacebuilding program, terminate the pipeline security contracts to former insurgent leaders, and prosecute Tompolo—a notorious exinsurgent—and other political elites from the opposition for alleged corruption (Onuoha 2016, 4; Okoroma 2016, 11; Abidde 2017, x1x). The dynamics of conflict escalation included the elite propensity to mobilize based on group identity as a tool for collective action. Because of the urgency to resist Buhari’s anti-corruption war, which ostensibly targeted the opposition and special interest groups, and his proposal to terminate the peacebuilding program, the oil region began to experience a new cycle of remilitarization. I use the term remilitarization to describe a situation whereby a demilitarized territory relapses into violence as dissidents mobilize to disrupt the peace process or delegitimize the state by resuming hostilities and targeting a nation’s critical

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infrastructure. The concept of remilitarization is illustrated in Fig. 5.2, which shows the dynamics of conflict escalation between 2009 and 2016. The trend line connecting points A to B in Fig. 5.2 indicates that the oil region had experienced a period of stability before the emergence of the NDA in 2016. Armed insurgency resurfaced in February 2016 (point B) and escalated dramatically as shown in the trend line. The level of escalation was partly the result of the initial unwillingness of the NDA to agree to a negotiated settlement with the federal government unless the negotiations were led by political elites from the oil region. The negotiated settlement resulted in a ceasefire (point C), at which point the conflict de-escalated. The narrow shape of the trend line connecting points B and C indicates the period in which the NDA had the most profound impact on the oil economy. By May 2016, the attack on oil infrastructure cut Nigeria’s crude oil production by 50%. But what explains why the NDA had such a profound impact within such a short period compared to previous insurgent groups that lasted much longer? The answer to this puzzle is political retribution. My argument is that the youth in the local communities who were barely struggling to eke out a living lacked the capacity to carry out explosions that could shut down an entire oil facility or submerge the national economy without political support. Conventional wisdom

Period of stability

B

A Time Fig. 5.2 A model of conflict re-escalation in the Niger Delta

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suggests that people at the grassroots have the bigger problem of making a daily living, and they don’t have the technology and equipment required to blow up oil infrastructure. The attack on the Bonga platform—Shell’s biggest facility on the Gulf of Guinea—is evidence that the NDA were more sophisticated in its operations and targets compared to previous insurgent groups. It is obvious the young men in the local communities who were mostly unemployed and struggling to put food on the table could not carry out the magnitude of destruction without funding from political elites. For example, some ex-insurgents mentioned to me that politicians were their main financiers. Thus, the impact of the NDA calls for attention to the role that political entrepreneurs played in conflict escalation, corresponding to what Zartman (2005) described as “creed.” The concept of “creed” represents a situation where political entrepreneurs exploit pre-existing identity issues, such as ethnic grievances, as a convenient tool to mobilize support for insurgency (Zartman 2005). Evidence from Zartman’s research in Columbia, Angola, and Afghanistan showed how political entrepreneurs such as UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), and the Taliban mobilized ethnicity, geography, class, and religious identity to wage intergroup conflict (Zartman 2005; Holmqvist 2012, 16). D’Estrea (2008) noted, however, that ethnicity itself does not produce manifest conflict as it is the interaction between conflicted parties that creates the conditions for actual conflict because it builds on pre-existing conditions and transforms them into good or bad outcomes. Therefore, political entrepreneurs played a critical role in sustaining Nigeria’s oil insurgency by mobilizing armed groups against the political regime whose policies were against their interests.

Determinants of Future Insurgency Many ex-insurgents faced tremendous challenges in the peacebuilding program when hostilities ended. The promise that their lives would be transformed after disarmament seemed like a dream. Many ex-insurgents became poorer and more vulnerable than they were before joining the insurgency. This experience reinforced my desire to ask whether the

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oil region is likely to experience a revival of future insurgency, and what would be the likely determinants. Of course, future insurgency is inevitable, and there is a growing realization in the oil region that waging violence can be an economically rewarding enterprise. Therefore, two conditions likely to revive future insurgency include the alienation of some ex-insurgents from peacebuilding benefits and employment discrimination by oil multinationals. Employment discrimination featured prominently in Chapter 4 and highlights one of the failures of post-conflict peacebuilding. Discriminating against those ex-insurgents who chose to give up violence and transform into peaceful citizens and denying them equal opportunities in the peace process devalued the quality of life they had been promised before agreeing to disarm. I coin the term Devaluation-Alienation to capture this experience in relation to the living conditions of some exinsurgents in the local communities. I define Devaluation-Alienation as the denial of opportunity to ex-insurgents, ostensibly provoking a sense of worthlessness among those who feel alienated from the benefits of a peace process designed to transform their lives. I argue that if this trend is not reversed, it would become a dangerous predictor of destructive behavior, such that accumulated grievances built up over time will throw the oil region into cycles of remilitarization.

Devaluation-Alienation The concept of Devaluation-Alienation captures the experience of many ex-insurgents, and it’s an important way of evaluating the dynamics emerging from post-conflict peacebuilding practices. As indicated in Chapter 4, some ex-insurgents who have built capacity in skills that are applicable to the oil and gas industry have difficulty transitioning to the labor market due to employment discrimination. The energy corporations are apprehensive of anyone who participated in the insurgency, and the level of apprehension has resulted in employment discrimination against former insurgents. Employment discrimination is also the result of the inability to access jobs requiring proficiency in technical skills the ex-insurgents thought they possessed due to their training, but they were

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rated substandard by the oil companies. Those who chose to train in vocations they thought would jumpstart their career in the petroleum industry suddenly found themselves facing employment barriers because the oil multinationals were unwilling to hire them. Alienation also arose from the corrupt practices of the peacebuilders who shortchanged the ex-insurgents. They were either denied their reintegration benefits or their names were expunged from the amnesty database. I met several ex-insurgents from southern Ijaw in Bayelsa State who had yet to access their reintegration benefits. They felt that some powerful actors were working against their interests by denying them their entitlements, or sometimes they chose to give them less than what the government promised them. I interviewed an ex-insurgent who strongly believed there would be conflict in the future because the peacebuilding program rewarded people disproportionately. It was evident from his frustration that those groups of ex-insurgents who surrendered their arms to the state but have yet to reap the reward of peacemaking feel alienated, hopeless, and resentful and would likely re-arm in the future. The appropriate concept that captures the experiences of this group of ex-insurgents is Devaluation-Alienation. The concept of Devaluation-Alienation resonates with the views of ex-insurgents who experienced firsthand the risk of engaging in combat with the military but were saddened by their living conditions in the local communities after disarming. Their exclusion from scholarship and skill training opportunities left them in a state of hopelessness. Their situation was compounded by the realization that their names were expunged from the amnesty database and replaced with individuals who did not engage in combat with the military but leveraged their connections to the peacebuilders and/or powerful political leaders to access foreign scholarship and training opportunities. The peacebuilding program became a source of resentment when the ex-insurgents who committed atrocities in their communities were sent overseas to acquire education and skill training in a range of vocations. Suddenly, some returned to Nigeria as pilots, engineers, and technicians while those whom they had violated or jeopardized their means of livelihoods were still languishing in poverty. The young men in the

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local communities suddenly realized it was more economically beneficial to mobilize weapons and blow up oil and gas infrastructure than it was to remain peaceful and languish in poverty. The former OSAPND boss Kingsley Kuku realized this strategic danger and took decisive steps to change the peacebuilding strategy in order to prevent a potential uprising. The new strategy required OSAPND to balance the ratio of ex-insurgents with non-insurgents in the distribution of peacebuilding opportunities. In practice, for every ex-insurgent who benefitted from overseas training who was rehabilitated successfully, a non-insurgent from the same community was offered a scholarship to study in a foreign university. A potential weakness of this strategy is that the beneficiaries were mostly recruited from Kuku’s ethnic group. These nepotistic tendencies have, over the years, dominated peacebuilding practices in the oil region and became a source of alienation. I met several ex-insurgents in Rivers State who were denied scholarship opportunities due to nepotism and their lack of political connections. Those ex-insurgents who feel that the peacebuilding program did not transform their lives may be tempted to resume violence in the future should their suffering continue unaddressed. The conflict trend in Fig. 5.3 shows that after a long period of stability, as indicated in points A to B, the oil region experienced another cycle of conflict escalation and de-escalation in 2016, as indicated in the trend line from B to C. The conflict de-escalated at point C when the NDA

Period of stability

A

B

C Time

Fig. 5.3 A model showing the trajectory of future insurgency

X

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negotiated a ceasefire in late 2016. However, the stability of the oil region was not necessarily an indication of sustainable peace. Once a group of ex-insurgents begin to perceive their suffering relatively, it will generate a need which, when unmet, can lead to an intense feeling of hopelessness, indignity, and injustice—a state of devaluation. Research by Hardy and Laszloffy (2005, 1) showed that “devaluation” occurs as “a process that strips an individual or a group of dignity, their sense of worth, and self-esteem.” It is both “situational”—derived from events, or “societal”—derived from threats to the victims’ identity. The intense feeling of devaluation among ex-insurgents who have been alienated from the material benefits of peacebuilding is a strategic danger that cannot be undermined. The conflict trend is pointing toward infinity at point X, and this indicates the possibility of a future insurgency, although one cannot predict with certainty when another group of insurgents is likely to strike and how long any potential insurgency would last. What is undeniable is that exclusion, anger, and injustice can build up into resentment, which then transforms negative emotions into hostile behaviors that would manifest in the pattern of conflict escalation. Therefore devaluation and alienation are powerful predictors of future insurgency, particularly involving those ex-insurgents who consider themselves victims of a failed peacebuilding program. This analysis is consistent with Galtung (1969), who theorized conflict as an ever-changing process in which attitudes, behaviors, and structures are continually evolving and affecting one another. The changing relationships between actors eventually compel them to pursue their interests by developing hostile attitudes and destructive actions.

Conclusion Peacebuilding is generally assumed to be a reasonable and necessary intervention in post-conflict societies. In Nigeria’s oil region, the transformation of ex-insurgents into skilled, highly educated, and entrepreneurial citizens has produced positive results that attest to the impact of the peacebuilding program. But when these interventions are politicized, poorly coordinated, and rife with corruption and nepotistic practices—as

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they are in the context of the Niger Delta peacebuilding program—they create the condition for conflict escalation. As this chapter has shown, exposure to the risks of unemployment has been a cause of grievance. While the peacebuilders’ efforts to facilitate reintegration through scholarship, skill training, and entrepreneurship is praiseworthy, it remains to be seen whether these programs delivered the impact needed to transform the conflict or sustain the peace. The starting point of peacebuilding is the understanding that the causes of insurgency are mutually reinforcing and multifaceted, and the peace process cannot overlook these dynamics. The example of the NDA suggests that despite the successful demilitarization program, the oil region may see further escalation of insurgency in the future if the goal of insurgents is to use violence as a strategy for political negotiation with the state. This chapter has shown that it is easy to mobilize identity groups in the oil region for collective action because identity itself serves as a powerful force for group formation. As Akerlof and Kranton (2000) noted, identity can influence an individual’s behavior and the relative position of the group they identify with. As this chapter has shown, identity is a critical unit of analysis in the spatial politics of insurgent groups as well as a powerful predictor of conflict behavior. It is reasonable to conclude that in a region with a history of violent interruptions, the security situation in the oil region is uncertain, particularly in the absence of a sustainable negotiated settlement between the state and local insurgents. Amidst this uncertainty is the truism that the geopolitical setup of a group such as the NDA and its impact on the nation’s economy bear a striking resemblance to the previous wave of insurgency that ended in 2009 when the state initiated the current peacebuilding program to stabilize the oil region. The probability of future insurgency despite Nigeria’s military capabilities and the threat of further hostilities should the alienation and suffering of ex-insurgents continue highlights a fundamental failure of the peacebuilding program. In the next chapter, I will examine how the dynamic processes of postconflict peacebuilding led to the emergence of a peace economy in the oil region. I show the general dissatisfaction with the government’s strategy

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of using financial incentives to negotiate peace with insurgents, and how the failure of this strategy raises the prospects of violence.

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jogat.com/publication/oil-pipeline-vandalization-in-the-niger-delta-implic ations-for-funding-education-in-nigeria/. Omeje, Kenneth. 2005. Oil Conflicts in Nigeria: Contending Issues and Perspectives of the Local Niger Delta Issue. New Political Economy 10 (3): 321–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563460500204183. Onuoha, Freedom C. 2016. A Guide to Militant, Ex-militant and Activist Groups in the Niger Delta. Report, Al Jazeera Center for Studies. June 8. Osaghae, Egosa E. 2015. Resource Curse or Resource Blessing: The Case of the Niger Delta “Oil Republic” in Nigeria. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 53 (2): 109–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/14662043.2015.1013297. Oyadongha, Samuel. 2012. FG Alone Cannot Tackle Youth Training Programme in Niger Delta. Vanguard , March 14. Accessed April 22, 2018. http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/03/fg-alone-cannot-tackle-youthtraining-programme-in-niger-delta-ex-militants/. Peter, Abraham, and Mercy Ocheni. 2015. Beyond Resource Endowment: The State and the Challenges of National Security in Nigeria, 1999 to 2014. Journal of Third World Studies 32 (1): 13–321. Sagay, Itse. 2008. Federalism, the Constitution and Resource Control. In Oil, Democracy, and the Promise of True Federalism in Nigeria, ed. A. A. Ikein, D.S.P. Alamieyeseigha, and S. Azaiki. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Ukiwo, Ukoha. 2015. Timing and Sequencing in Peacebuilding: The Case of Nigeria’s Niger Delta Amnesty Programme. Nigeria Stability and Reconciliation Programme, British Council, Nigeria, CRPD Working Paper No 36. Watts, Michael. 2005. Righteous Oil? Human Rights, the Oil Complex and Corporate Social Responsibility. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30: 373–407. Zartman, I. William. 2005. Need, Creed, and Greed in Intrastate Conflict. In Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed, and Greed , ed. Cynthia J. Arnson and I. William Zartman, 256–84. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

6 The Emergence of a Peace Economy

Since 2009, the Nigerian state has made tremendous progress in countering insurgency in the oil region. In addition to granting amnesty to thousands of insurgents, the state implemented an ambitious DDR program as a framework for post-conflict peacebuilding. DDR was designed with an economic rationale that involved paying 30,000 exinsurgents a monthly stipend of N65,000—twice the federal minimum wage of N30,000—to remain peaceful. Conflict analysts have argued that the strategy of paying ex-insurgents to be peaceful was counterproductive because it ignored the complex development challenges in the oil region where insurgency has historically grown (Davidheiser and Nyiayaana 2011; Ajayi and Adesote 2013; Ushie 2013; Agbiboa 2015; Okonofua 2016; Schultze-Kraft 2017). This chapter argues that the monetization of peacebuilding created conditions such that any group with a grievance can mobilize arms targeting oil infrastructure as a negotiation strategy leading to agreements with the state. This challenge is compounded by the manifestation of corruption in peacebuilding

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processes. The transformation of the peace process into an enterprise— what I call a peace economy—has rendered prospects toward positive peacebuilding a complex undertaking. In this chapter, I examine the peace economy in the oil region. Underlying the peace economy is the way monetization of peacebuilding has reinforced corruption and marginalization, which subsequently created the conditions for the revival of insurgency. While the peacebuilding program represents a laudable effort undertaken by the state to stabilize security in the oil region, the strategy of incentivizing insurgents with monetary benefits gives the impression that the state only rewards individuals who resort to violence as a means of drawing political attention to their suffering. The conclusion drawn from this chapter is that the search for lasting peace must give attention to the threats that could arise from the growing awareness that any group with a grievance can mobilize arms to achieve self-serving objectives. This conclusion ties closely with the discussion in Chapter 5 that illustrates how conditions will likely escalate future insurgency in the oil region.

Understanding the Dynamics of the Peace Economy In conventional DDR operations, disarmed insurgents usually undergo a period of reinsertion. This occurs during demobilization and before the reintegration process. Reinsertion involves temporary financial assistance to disarmed insurgents to help cover their immediate needs. It includes remedial education, training, shelter, and transitional safety allowances. In the context of Nigeria’s DDR program, the state offered to pay the ex-insurgents a housing allowance of N150,000 and a monthly stipend of N65,000. Under conventional DDR best practices, the housing allowance is usually a one-time payment while the monthly stipend is meant to provide temporary assistance to the insurgents. The designers of the DDR program felt that reinsertion was necessary because the ex-insurgents were previously engaged in criminal activities, such as kidnapping and oil theft, that gave them access to enormous material wealth. Therefore, reinsertion was considered the opportunity cost of

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their financial losses from criminal activities. Despite this commitment, some ex-insurgents were dissatisfied with the peacebuilding process. An ex-insurgent from the Ogoni community in Rivers State told me, “We have given up our livelihood. We were making money from illegal oil refining but presently we have nothing.” My experience in the field shows that the payment of a housing allowance and monthly stipend enabled many ex-insurgents to live as responsible citizens by getting married, supporting families, owning their own homes, and running their businesses. It is the dream of every young man in those local communities to own a private home and support a family. Yet without income, many young men who participated in the insurgency couldn’t envision themselves getting married and living responsibly in private homes. Participation in the peacebuilding program enabled them to earn a monthly stipend allowing many who were either renting or living in family homes to now own private homes. Jeff is an example of a young man who dreamt of owning a home but could barely meet his basic needs due to lack of income. Poverty shattered his dreams, pushed him into insurgency, and deprived him of his sense of responsibility. But his decision to forego violence and accept amnesty enabled him to earn a monthly stipend. He decided to invest his savings to get married, support his family, and put his son through a private school. Making the transition from living in a family home to becoming a homeowner and supporting a family is a positive development in the peace process that cannot be underestimated, particularly in rural communities where a growing population of ex-insurgents is still languishing in hopelessness. Although Ushie (2013) raised critical concerns about the monetization of peacebuilding, my study shows that the stipend was instrumental in maintaining stability in the oil region. I recall my experience with some ex-insurgents who vowed not to engage in criminal activities for fear of being confined in jail where they would be separated from their families. Supporting a family gave them a sense of responsibility, and those who experienced the beauty of having a family to care for are unwilling to engage further in criminal behavior. As Benson, an ex-insurgent, told me, “I don’t want to participate in violence because I now have a family.”

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Such decisions give credence to the positive impact of the peacebuilding program in transforming some insurgents into responsible citizens. The impact of the peace economy can be seen also in the story of Bridget, a 35-year-old single mother who grew up in a village with limited opportunities for young women. Bridget had decided to join the insurgency so she could access the financial benefits from the illegal oil trade to give her daughter better opportunities in life. When she began receiving her monthly stipend, she invested in a local restaurant where she generated enough profit to fund her daughter’s medical degree at the University of Port-Harcourt. She believed she fought the insurgency to protect her daughter’s future; at the time of this research, her daughter was two years away from becoming the first female physician in her village. Other female ex-insurgents like Bridget who previously could not afford to provide for themselves, much less their families, now have the resources to do so. The financial incentives have undoubtedly transformed the lives of many ex-insurgents, and as a result, kidnapping activities have been greatly reduced in the oil region. The more people benefitting financially from the peacebuilding program, the greater likelihood that the oil region will experience stability. Nevertheless, the peace economy has over time sustained a culture of dependency that could allow future insurgencies to grow. The consequence, as Ajibola (2015) noted, is that those who were excluded from these benefits might take up arms in the future.

Conflict Entrepreneurs in the Peace Economy In 2012, the federal government under President Goodluck Jonathan awarded the Oil Pipeline Surveillance and Protection (OPSP) contract to former leaders of the various insurgent groups. The beneficiaries of these contracts included Global West Vessel Specialist Limited, owned by Government Ekpemupolo (Tompolo). He benefitted from a security contract of US$103 million, in addition to a US$22 million awarded to his other company, Egbe Security River One in the 2014 OPSP contract extension (Adibe 2016). Other leaders who benefitted from the

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2014 OPSP contract extension included Asari Dokubo, whose company Gallery Security was awarded a US$9 million contract; Ateke Tom, whose company Close Body Protection was awarded US$3.8 million, and Ebikabowei Victor Ben (“General” Boyloaf ) whose companies Adex Energy Security, Donyx Global Concept, Oil Facilities Surveillance, and New Age Global Security were awarded a total of US$3.8 million (Adibe 2016). This move favoring high profile ex-insurgent leaders attracted widespread condemnation by critics who felt that the government was rewarding criminal behavior. The federal government responded to critics with a counter argument suggesting these actions were necessary to protect the national interest. However, the transformation of former warlords into security contractors responsible for protecting the coastal communities gave them access to enormous financial power and reinforced their capabilities and political influence across the oil region (Ushie 2013). This includes their capacity to inflict unspeakable violence should the government ever attempt to renege on its contractual obligation. Political developments following President Buhari’s victory in the 2015 presidential election and his proposal to terminate the security contracts to ex-insurgent leaders as well as overhaul the peacebuilding program, a source of livelihood to thousands of ex-insurgents, threatened the balance of power in the oil region. His proposal also raised the stakes dramatically by instigating the revival of insurgency championed by the NDA. The unwillingness of the NDA to initially negotiate with the federal government unless such negotiations were led by Niger Delta leaders was perceived as a politically calculated attempt to delegitimize President Buhari, who was accused of promoting indiscriminate reform against the interests of the oil region. As argued persuasively in Chapter 5, the NDA was a creation of political elites who fell out of favor with the Buhari administration. This argument flows from the political retribution concept discussed in Chapter 5 and gives justification to the peace economy by suggesting that a post-conflict society can relapse into violence when political elites perceive potential threats to their economic interests and decide to mobilize insurgency to protect these vital interests.

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A Dangerous Trajectory The decision by the Nigerian government to transform leaders of the various insurgent groups into peacebuilding vendors has consequences that deserve scrutiny. These leaders have been accused of shortchanging their loyalists by withholding their allowances or paying them less than the N65,000 that the federal government approved as their monthly stipend in 2009. Some ex-insurgents from Rivers told me they collect N40,000 out of the N65,000 approved for them, which is paid through their leader, Ateke Tom. As I dug deeper into the dynamics of the peace economy, some facts unfolded that indicated these deductions were used to compensate the families of those insurgents who died in combat. As stated in the previous chapters, the positive impacts of peacebuilding are evident in the lives of some ex-insurgents. The monthly payments have also improved the lives of those ex-insurgents who chose to invest their earnings in small-scale enterprises or some building project. But those individuals who lost family members to the insurgency and those whose homes were destroyed by violence were excluded from the amnesty benefits (Nwajiaku-Dahou 2010). When the deceased families realized how much the ex-insurgents are paid monthly, they decided to confront the leaders to seek compensation for the loss of their family members whom these leaders allegedly recruited into insurgency. The leaders were compelled to deduct a percentage of the monthly stipends from other ex-insurgents to compensate the deceased families. Some exinsurgents argue against this forced deduction as they unwillingly settle for less than the amount they agreed upon with the federal government. One of the dangers of transforming former insurgent leaders into peacebuilding vendors is that payments that were intended to provide transitional support to regular insurgents have continued indefinitely, giving them an enormous amount of power. The federal government’s inability to sustain these payments may constitute a strategic danger to the stability of the oil region. This concern was expressed by exinsurgents who have resolved to resume the war in the creeks should the federal government decide to terminate the monthly payments that invariably would translate into cutting their lifeline. They perceive these payments as the federal government’s fulfillment of a promise to them in return for disarming and renouncing insurgency. The onus falls on

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the government to ensure direct accountability to the ex-insurgents and avoid contracting with leaders who may divert funds or alter the process, thus threatening the integrity of the peacebuilding program. While narrating his experience working in the high seas amid threats of insurgent activities, one of the technical staff at the Chevron Corporation whom I interviewed in Port-Harcourt city expressed similar fears over the possibility of the oil region relapsing into insurgency. To him, “future insurgency would be triggered by the government’s inability to address the root causes of the problem as sustainably as possible.” Therefore, the peacebuilding program needs continuity if the government is to address the multifaceted development challenges in the oil region. Although the government has shown some commitment, more effort is needed to address the causes of insurgency at its roots. Analysts have raised critical concerns regarding the politics of postconflict peacebuilding in the oil region, questioning whose interest it serves. Obi (2014) applied a political economics analysis to uncover the power relations that underlie amnesty politics. He argued that amnesty represents less of a peacebuilding program and more of a political project undertaken by Nigeria’s elites to maintain their preponderance over natural resources (Obi 2014). For Ajayi and Adesote (2013), amnesty represents less of a humanitarian initiative and more of a reactionary intervention deployed by the government to buy peace from insurgents with the aim of preventing the disruption of oil production. As SchultzeKraft (2017, 621) argued, elites can exploit organized crime and use it as a powerful tool to negotiate a political solution and gain access to resources. Given that the Nigerian government was under pressure to increase oil production, it presented amnesty as a “renegotiation of the existing political settlement designed to protect the economic and political interests of national and regional elites” (Schultze-Kraft 2017, 621). While this strategy was successful in re-establishing oil and gas production, it failed to address the root causes of insurgency in the oil region (Agbiboa 2015). It follows that the resumption of peace in the oil region and the subsequent boost in oil output only established the success of the peacebuilding program in achieving the government’s political objective rather than addressing the roots of insurgency.

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A fundamental challenge confronting the peacebuilding program was the appearance that it was the government’s gift to insurgents, allowing them to sidestep the main grievances of the local communities (Davidheiser and Nyiayaana 2011). While monetary incentives enabled the state to create a conducive environment for oil and gas production (Davidheiser and Nyiayaana 2011; Ushie 2013; Obi 2014; Agbiboa 2015; Okonofua 2016; Schultze-Kraft 2017), the peacebuilding process was reduced to a monetary transfer policy that appeared attractive in the short term but may not be sustainable. By implication, the peace process ignored the root causes of the insurgency and is a far cry from genuine reconciliation (Davidheiser and Nyiayaana 2011). As Ushie (2013, 33) noted, “The state is simply paying insurgents to be peaceful.” The failure to resolve the proliferation of arms in the oil region has further revived criminal activities to the extent that crime has become a survival strategy among ex-insurgents who feel that the peacebuilding program marginalized them. Under this condition, the instrumentality of peacebuilding—the idea that peacebuilding must lead to a certain end—is forfeited as the process is more about sustaining the peace economy.

Corruption and Peacebuilding Corruption is generally understood as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. It manifests in different ways, including through the misuse of entrusted funds and power, as well as fraudulent and nepotistic practices. The preamble to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption states that corruption represents actions that threaten the stability of societies; undermines the functioning of democratic institutions, the rule of law, and ethical values and justice; and jeopardizes sustainable development (United Nations 2003). Coming from the United Nations, this statement emphasizing a causal link between corruption and instability indicates that a renewed critical focus on the relationship between corruption and peacebuilding is necessary. While the causal factors are multifaceted and contextual, they are deeply embedded in a country’s bureaucratic culture, policy machinery, and educational system. They also tend to flourish under weak governance institutions. As some

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analysts have pointed out, corruption is a form of moral depravity (Akinlabi et al. 2011; Aluko 2002) that manifests not just in public and private domains but also in the institutional settings of society (Saleim and Bontis 2009). This is evident in the Niger Delta context where corrupt practices manifest in every facet of the peacebuilding system.

Diversion of Peacebuilding Benefits When the Buhari administration took over in 2015 with a commitment to fight corruption, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) launched an investigation against the former OSAPND boss Kingsley Kuku in connection with embezzlement and fraudulent diversion of peacebuilding funds. In 2018, President Buhari fired Kuku’s successor, Paul Boro, over allegations of graft and appointed Charles Dokubo as his replacement. A few years later, Dokubo was embroiled in different corruption allegations. He was eventually fired in February 2020. These examples show that corruption is undeniably a critical challenge confronting the Niger Delta peacebuilding program. While in the field, I made tremendous efforts to probe the subject of corruption by asking participants whether they perceived some elements of corruption in the peacebuilding program. The results showed that corruption manifests in different forms, including bribery, selective deployment of ex-insurgents for foreign education and training programs, withholding of entitlements to the insurgents, poor implementation of entrepreneurship training and empowerment programs, the inflation of peacebuilding contracts, and a lack of transparency in the documentation of ex-insurgents. Some ex-insurgents drew attention to the corrupt process of selecting beneficiaries for the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship to study in the UK, USA, Canada, and Germany. They believe that the peacebuilders manipulated the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship to favor family members, members of the same ethnic group, or individuals with political connections while most of the voiceless ex-insurgents were deprived of these opportunities. Corruption also manifests in the role that peacebuilding vendors play in diverting training and post-training empowerment benefits. These

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practices were prevalent in Rivers and Bayelsa States. I realized the victims were not just the ex-insurgents but also the amnesty students whose allowances were often withheld for several months and eventually forfeited. The ex-insurgents believed the peacebuilders at OSAPND manipulated the amnesty database to alter the identities of legitimate ex-insurgents and replace them with family members who did not participate in the insurgency. At least 98% of the amnesty students I met at Ritman University told me they either bribed their way through or leveraged their family connections to access the scholarship. I also interviewed the peacebuilders at OSAPND who shared their perspectives on why many youths in the local communities were awarded scholarships to study overseas even though they did not participate in the insurgency. They argued that those youth in the oil region who did not participate in the insurgency are equally indigenes of the Niger Delta, and they may be motivated to take up arms in the future due to a lack of empowerment. They believe including non-insurgents in the peacebuilding program will empower thousands of youths and possibly prevent future insurgency. The challenge, as Oluduro and Oluduro (2012) pointed out, is that when the government designs empowerment policies that rewards violent actors while marginalizing others, it could send the wrong signal to those who have been excluded that criminality is beneficial, and may be the driving force for them to mobilize arms for recognition. While this assumption is legitimate, there are instances where vendors have diverted the resources meant to empower the ex-insurgents or deliver less of these resources to them. Such corrupt practices may point to the reason some ex-insurgents have been denied their benefits, often leaving them wondering why they were not receiving communication or payments from OSAPND.

A Corrupt DDR System One of the challenges confronting the DDR program has been the lack of a clear exit strategy. The program was designed to take the insurgents through the conventional three-phase process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. The reintegration phase is the final phase of

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the DDR process. Once a disarmed and demobilized insurgent has gone through the process up to the reintegration phase, they are expected to exit from the system. But the implementation of the Niger Delta DDR program is mired in technical complexities because the insurgents who have gone through the reintegration phase have not yet exited the system. The 30,000 participants who enlisted in the program are still captured in the database and collecting monthly payments even though many, if not all the participants, should be reintegrated into civilian society after a decade of peacebuilding. Moreover, I discovered that the payment of monthly stipends to the insurgents, designed initially as transitional support that would terminate following their successful demobilization, is still ongoing at the reintegration phase. Thousands of ex-insurgents who have been reintegrated and are operating successful businesses in their various communities are receiving the monthly stipend, and in most cases, someone is collecting the stipend on their behalf. Those who have graduated from university and training programs and have reintegrated overseas are captured in the amnesty database and collecting monthly stipends. Given that the peacebuilders are still maintaining a register of 30,000 participants in the amnesty database, which includes those who have already reintegrated in foreign lands, students who have graduated, and ex-insurgents who have fully reintegrated into the local communities through entrepreneurship, new concerns have arisen regarding the transparency of the peacebuilding program. Unlike conventional DDR processes, the Niger Delta DDR program lacks a clear exit strategy and timeline due to corruption. My effort to probe into this observation was fruitless as the peacebuilders were unwilling to provide full disclosure as to the number of participants who have been reintegrated economically and academically without exiting the DDR process, including those still receiving monthly payments after reintegration. This discovery raises critical questions concerning transparency in the governance of the peacebuilding program. Under the current peacebuilding framework, DDR remains a palliative measure that survives on its ability to prevent ex-insurgents from resuming violence by sustaining their monthly stipends rather than as an instrument for sustainable peace.

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How Vendors Exploit Peacebuilding for Personal Gain While in the field I discovered that the peacebuilders face enormous challenges coordinating the educational, training, and empowerment programs undertaken simultaneously in different locations within and outside Nigeria. This has resulted in the transformation of peacebuilding into an opportunity for wealth accumulation. Several ex-insurgents narrated their experiences while attending the Heavy-Duty Generator Operation and Maintenance in Lagos, Nigeria. While the Lagos program was designed to last for twelve months and includes practical and in-class modules, the vendor contracted to coordinate the training decided to lodge the trainees in a hotel for nearly one year and paid them monthly allowances of N90,000 without giving them training. The training only took place two weeks prior to the completion of the twelve-month period. The federal government wasted resources in feeding the trainees and paying their hotel bills and monthly stipends for nearly a year without any result. In this example, peacebuilding generated an economy that benefited the vendors who often conspired with the trainers to reduce the duration of the training in order to minimize cost and increase their profit margins to the detriment of the trainees. The ex-insurgents who trained in marine technology in Asia attributed the failures of the peacebuilding program to the mediocre training given to them overseas. Most of the trainings took place in colleges abroad and were designed to last for two years, in line with the traditional diploma curriculum. But those ex-insurgents who trained in Asia had not completed the two years duration when they were returned to Nigeria. They believe the substandard training they received in Asia ill-prepared them to deploy their skills in today’s challenging job market. Sending the ex-insurgents overseas for marine training and repatriating them to Nigeria with substandard certifications that make them unemployable is a fruitless endeavor that produced an army of redundant trainees who feel disempowered and frustrated. Many ex-insurgents are roaming the streets as jobless citizens because the training and certifications they received did not prepare them to compete in the industries where those skills are needed.

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A specific case was that of David, an ex-insurgent from Rivers who dreamt of pursuing a university education but was denied the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship due to a lack of connections. He was later deployed to the United Arab Emirates to train in pipeline welding, but he faced difficulty securing employment after returning to Nigeria because the training he received was substandard. Apparently, the peacebuilding vendor contracted by OSAPND to facilitate David’s training in the UAE diverted part of the funds and negotiated with the trainers to deliver the training in under four months. David received substandard training that did not prepare him to compete in the industry—so much so that the peacebuilding vendor conspired with the trainer to contract an agent who completed the certification exams for him in order to fast-track his graduation. He was repatriated to Nigeria at the expiration of the four months training but has since been languishing in the village because companies would not hire him. Other ex-insurgents shared similar stories concerning their deployment to Asia for marine training. Many were issued fake certifications that prospective employers in Nigeria refuse to recognize. The dominant narrative is that the peacebuilding vendors contracted to facilitate these trainings often connive with the trainers abroad to reduce the duration of the training even though the federal government through OSAPND paid for the full training. This enabled them to divert the training funds to the detriment of the trainees who then receive substandard training that make them unemployable upon returning to Nigeria. I discovered, however, that some ex-insurgents negotiated with the vendors to pay them part of the monies budgeted for their training and reduce the duration of the training, not understanding that their decisions would have future consequences.

Conclusion It is an undeniable fact that post-conflict peacebuilding in Nigeria’s oil region is driven largely by a peace economy. The use of financial incentives to buy peace from insurgents has created an industry around the peacebuilding program to the extent that any group with a grievance

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can mobilize violence as an attractive means of making easy money. The emergence of a peace economy poses significant challenges to the stability of the oil region because it left many ex-insurgents in possession of weapons easily mobilized for financial gain. In a way, the condition for peace in the oil region is contingent on the continuous flow of monetary resources to the ex-insurgents and dependent on the government continuing its support of the peacebuilding program that they consider their lifeline. Peacebuilding is, in this case, a means of buying off insurgents to be peaceful without addressing the root causes of the problem. As will be empirically demonstrated in Chapter 8, this approach to peacebuilding has set the oil region on a dangerous trajectory. This chapter makes the case that the peacebuilding program merely exists as an infrastructure for sustaining the peace economy. I show that the peace economy extends beyond the ex-insurgents to include the role of peacebuilders who divert peacebuilding resources and opportunities through corrupt and nepotistic practices. Thus, how the material benefits of peacebuilding are appropriated is an important consideration in future insurgency, particularly for those ex-insurgents who feel they have not been appropriately rewarded after disarming. The implication is that, should the federal government decide to terminate the peacebuilding program, the oil region is likely to experience a relapse into insurgency. The next chapter of the book will explore the various perceptions of peace in the oil region to provide a comprehensive understanding of the nature of peace.

References Adibe, Raymond. 2016. Oil Governance in Nigeria and Maritime Security in the Gulf of Guinea 2010–2014. PhD Thesis, University of Nigeria. Agbiboa, Daniel A. 2015. Transformational Strategy or Gilded Pacification? Four Years on: The Niger Delta Armed Conflict and the DDR Process of the Nigerian Amnesty Programme. Journal of Asian and African Studies 50 (4): 387–411. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909614530082.

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Ajayi, Adegboyega I., and Adesola S. Adesote. 2013. The Gains and Pains of the Amnesty Programme in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, 2007–2012: A Preliminary Assessment. Journal of Asian and African Studies 48 (4): 506–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909613493607. Ajibola, Iyabobola O. 2015. Nigeria’s Amnesty Program: The Role of Empowerment in Achieving Peace and Development in Post-Conflict Niger Delta. Sage. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244015589996. Akinlabi, Ade Oyedijo, Babatunde Hamed, and M.A. Awoniyi. 2011. Corruption, Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth in Nigeria: An Empirical Investigation. Journal of Research in International Business Management 1 (9): 278–92. Aluko, Mao. 2002. The Institutionalisation of Corruption and its Impact on Political Culture in Nigeria. Nordic Journal of African Studies 2 (3): 393– 402. Davidheiser, Mark, and Kialee Nyiayaana. 2011. Demobilization or Remobilization? The Amnesty Program and the Search for Peace in the Niger Delta. African Security 4 (1): 44–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392206. 2011.551063. Nwajiaku-Dahou, Kathryn. 2010. The Politics of Amnesty in the Niger Delta: Challenges Ahead. Notes de l’Ifri, December. Accessed March 27, 2020. https://www.ifri.org/en/publications/notes-de-lifri/politics-amn esty-niger-delta-challenges-ahead. Obi, Cyril, I. 2014. Oil and the Post-Amnesty Programme (PAP): What Prospects for Sustainable Development and Peace in the Niger Delta? Review of African Political Economy 41 (140): 249–63. https://doi.org/10.1080/030 56244.2013.872615. Okonofua, Benjamin A. 2016. The Niger Delta Amnesty Program: The Challenges of Transitioning from Peace Settlements to Long-Term Peace. SAGE Open 6 (2): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244016654522. Oluduro, Olubayo, and Olubisi F. Oluduro. 2012. Nigeria: In Search of Sustainable Peace in the Niger Delta through the Amnesty Programme. Journal of Sustainable Development 5 (7): 48–61. Schultze-Kraft, Markus. 2017. Understanding Organised Violence and Crime in Political Settlements: Oil Wars, Petro-criminality and Amnesty in the Niger Delta. Journal of International Development 29 (5): 613–27. https:// doi.org/10.1002/jid.3287. Seleim, A., and N. Bontis. 2009. The Relationship between Culture and Corruption: A Cross National Study. Journal of Intellectual Capital 10 (1): 165–84.

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United Nations. 2003. Preamble to the Convention Against Corruption. Accessed December 4, 2020. http://www.jus.uio.no/lm/un.against.corrup tion.convention.2003/preamble.html. Ushie, Vanessa. 2013. Nigeria’s Amnesty Programme as a Peacebuilding Infrastructure: A Silver Bullet? Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 8 (1): 30–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2013.789255.

Part III Conceptualizing and Theorizing Peace

7 Conceptions of Peace in the Niger Delta

On January 10, 2018, I landed in Akwa Ibom State to survey the peacebuilding ecosystem in the Ibeno communities, the operational base of ExxonMobil in Nigeria, and draw contrasts to my experience in Rivers and Bayelsa States. Ibeno is located on a swampy terrain overlooking a beautiful sandy beach along the Atlantic Ocean and is composed of twenty-six officially recognized villages situated on the eastern, northern, central, and western flanks of the coast. As I walked down the Ibeno beach to interact with locals, I imagined the eerie beauty and powerfully evocative wetland ecosystem that stretches across the coastal landscape from where the surrounding communities derive their wealth of natural resources. I soon realized the coastal communities are vulnerable to fluctuations in the tidal range caused by the cumulative effects of gravitational forces exerted on the Atlantic coast. These environmental pressures render villages on the eastern flank inaccessible during periods of rising sea levels. Similar problems persist on the western flank of the coast, ostensibly vulnerable to instability arising from sea piracy while security interventions by state actors were relatively absent due to the lack of transportation and communication infrastructure. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 O. Okoi, Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2_7

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As my visits to the Ibeno communities became more frequent, I began to understand the effects of environmental stressors resulting from oil spills, seismic vibrations from geophysical explorations, and hydrocarbon gasses emitted from ExxonMobil flow stations. But these dynamics are not just found only in the Ibeno communities; they mirror the broader challenges in the oil region, particularly in Rivers and Bayelsa, where oil pollution has devastated local ecosystems. Beyond the environmental conundrum, the stories I heard talking to community leaders and my observations of the lived experiences of people drowning in hopelessness—including those who could barely access job opportunities in the oil industry due to a lack of technical skills—evokes serious concerns about the meaning of peace. In both Rivers and Bayelsa, I interacted with hundreds of ex-insurgents who raised critical concerns about insecurity in the coastal communities impacted by high rates of unemployment, which ultimately explains the severity of structural violence. Despite the prevalence of structural violence, the research participants believed their communities were “peaceful.” But what does peace in the oil region really mean? This chapter examines the various conceptions of peace in Nigeria’s oil region. Four main concepts—stability, nonviolence, development, and freedom—have become the critical features that convey people’s perceptions of peace. These concepts derive from the meanings individuals give to their experience in relation to the insecurities that arose (or keep arising) in their communities in the wake of the insurgency, the challenges that manifest through the various processes of peacebuilding, the actions they consider appropriate for addressing insecurity, and their personal visions of a peaceful world. This understanding is crucial in ensuring that the four concepts become fully embedded in peace and conflict studies.

Peace as Freedom Nigeria’s oil insurgency is characterized by an increase in the availability of small arms and light weapons and added capacity of local insurgents to inflict violence targeting petroleum infrastructure (Joab-Peterside 2007;

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Ibaba 2008). In the wake of the insurgency, criminal activities such as sea piracy, hostage taking, kidnapping, armed robbery, rape, and bomb explosions were rampant. Local women and girls became victims of rape (Ekine 2008) and migrant workers were kidnapped for ransom (Akpan 2010; Thom-Otuya 2010; Oriola 2012; Ngwama 2014; Aghedo 2015; Chinwokwu and Michael 2019; Albert et al. 2020). These criminogenic patterns escalated the level of insecurity in coastal communities, prompting the state to militarize the region through a Joint Task Force of the Nigerian Armed Forces. The Joint Task Force unleashed a wellcoordinated offensive on land, by sea, and through air strikes to destroy the insurgent networks and protect the nation’s oil facilities (Chiluwa 2011; Bassey 2012; Utin 2018; Oluyemi 2020). Further, the Ijaw-Itsekiri conflict in Delta State that resulted in the destruction of Itsekiri communities in 2003 and forced the Chevron Corporation to shut down its onshore operations gave impetus to the militarization of the oil region. The criminal activities of armed groups with primordial ethnic sentiments that emerged in the wake of this conflict combined with the operations of the Joint Task Force to impose an atmosphere of insecurity that threatened individual and community freedoms. According to Oluyemi (2020, 8), Joint Task Force operations produced equally catastrophic consequences for local communities in Delta State that resulted in “many civilian casualties” and massive population displacement. Asuni (2009, 14) noted that these communities were caught in the crossfire of a warfare between a corrupt military task force trying to “muscle out the armed groups’ criminal activities,” a move that encouraged the insurgent groups to embark on a massive recruitment drive to reinforce their capabilities against the military. The militarization of the oil region was the state’s approach to peace. Rather than generalizing our understanding of peace as “the absence of violence, or the absence of war” (Galtung 1964, 2; Galtung 1969, 168), it is important that we place the concept of peace in its unique context. The context of peace must consider the changing relationship between the state and local insurgents, and between local communities and oil multinationals. These transformations bring to light a common perception of peace that is rooted in “freedom.” Throughout my interactions with insurgents and non-insurgents alike, the word “freedom”

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was a recurring theme used to capture what peace meant to them. Peace is understood in the broader context of identifiable changes in the post-conflict environment since 2009. One indicator of change was the demilitarization of the coastal communities, which enabled citizens to breathe in the air of freedom. Oriola (2012) identified two contrasting representations of freedom in the Niger Delta creeks. The first is what he calls ita ominira or freedom space, representing a social space where local insurgents assert their sovereignty and masculinity, away from the “intimating presence” of military forces (Oriola 2012, 538). Symbolically, “freedom space” represents a social environment where insurgents do not feel constricted. Freedom also manifests as ominira, representing the twin forces of idera (comfort) where freedom is defined as the highest ideals of a “free and genuinely democratic society” where industrial capitalism and local cultural dynamics coexist, and inira (discomfort), which ironically symbolizes the complexity of life in the Niger Delta creeks (Oriola 2012, 538). This context of freedom means liberation from threats that inflict bodily harm on individuals, cause psychological distress on communities, and create an atmosphere of insecurity and fear. In other words, freedom means liberation from fear. In this context, peace is understood as the level of freedom individuals enjoy in communities that were once the epicenter of violent activities. Peace exists where individuals can engage in legitimate activity without fear of being kidnapped or attacked by criminals, where women and girls can conduct their daily lives without fear of molestation by criminals, and where developmental activities can continue unfettered by the activities of armed groups. Peace exists where people with clearly opposing tendencies and differing political stripes can interact freely without fear of oppression and harm to one another. People derive peace from living or working in communities where they feel liberated from threats to their security and safety compared to the period when these insecurities were rampant and threatened freedom of movement. It is not only the victims who need to experience freedom; the perpetrators as well must imagine how their actions can contribute in liberating post-conflict communities from the fear that previously pervaded them.

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The relationship between peace and freedom defines the situation in coastal communities across the oil region once dominated by armed groups who perpetrated atrocities that obstructed economic activity along the waterways. Emerging from such an environment dominated by insecurity to inhabit a post-conflict society where individuals now conduct their business without fear of being attacked, raped, or robbed by armed groups is a liberating experience that attests to the value of freedom. Peace and freedom are mutually inclusive experiences because the achievement of peace will be difficult in an environment where individuals are living in constant fear. The conceptual link between peace and freedom requires careful attention to how individuals define their sense of security. Attention must be paid to the fact that freedom is both a fundamental constituent of peace and a liberating experience. In order words, freedom is both constitutive of peace and instrumental to it. People perceive freedom in relation to personal liberty and derive peace from their safety from physical threats. Freedom also involves people’s perception of political safety, whereby the use of military airstrikes against insurgents operating in the Niger Delta creeks no longer threatens the security and psychological well-being of non-combatant civilians. This understanding is important because historically, insecurity in the oil region has mostly been associated with conditions that give rise to conflict, such as the economic and political marginalization of minorities (Idemudia 2009; Ikelegbe 2006; UNDP 2006) and not behaviors that must be transformed to enable individuals and communities to live in relative safety.

Peace as Development Underdevelopment has been identified as one of the greatest threats to peace in the oil region (Ikelegbe 2006 ; Idemudia 2009). Research by Watts (2007, 1) showed that in both Bayelsa and Delta States, the number of doctors to patients is disproportionate, with the ratio of one doctor for every 150,000 population. The dysfunctional state of infrastructure and pressure for equitable distribution of oil revenue highlight the connection between peace and development.

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Development is an essential condition for peace because it directs peacebuilding efforts creatively by raising the opportunity cost of insurgency through programs that address the causes of underdevelopment. As indicated in Chapter 3, ex-insurgents who have experienced identifiable changes in their socioeconomic status through access to education, the development of technical skills, and entrepreneurship opportunities have less incentive to recourse to violence. While there have been historical efforts to address underdevelopment in the oil region (UNDP 2006), attention has recently shifted toward amnesty as a strategy for peace and development (Ushie 2013; Ajibola 2015; Ikelegbe and Umukoro 2016). In this book, development is defined as improvements in the well-being of marginalized citizens and communities. This definition encourages holistic intervention in development activities to build stability and resilience in post-conflict communities across the oil region.

The Nature of Development Throughout my fieldwork, the term development featured repeatedly in my interviews and informal conversations with ex-insurgents. When asked about what peace means to them, many responded that peace is synonymous with development. However, development meant different things to different people, depending on who I was talking to—their lived experience, perspective of the world, how they interpret their wellbeing or suffering, and the values they embody. Some ex-insurgents perceived development as the satisfaction of their basic needs and opportunities that put money in their pockets, such as the payment of monthly stipends, as a means to peace. They believe peace cannot be achieved without somehow meeting the basic needs of people, like food and clothing and other family responsibilities. Development is also conceived as the infrastructure required for the social and economic transformation of local communities, or what a youth leader from the Ibeno community in Akwa Ibom referred to as “visible infrastructure for the benefit of all.” Development in this context means building roads and bridges to integrate rural people into mainstream society, building hospitals to improve access to health care in

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local communities, and building schools to promote access to education. Nafziger (2006) recognized poverty as a multidimensional problem that includes lack of access to basic infrastructure, such as roads, transport, and clean water. One of the earliest scholars to establish the connection between peace and development was Edward Azar. Azar (1985, 69) argued for a more comprehensive concept of security by linking human needs to a broader understanding of “development” and “political access.” For Azar, conflict resolution should be measured against the removal of underdevelopment while the state of peace must equate with the level of development. Peace in Nigeria’s oil region will be difficult to achieve in the absence of infrastructure to support social and economic transformation. But peace is achievable when individuals have the means to earn a decent living, improve their health, and gain access to education. Peace, in this context, is understood as the development of infrastructure to support economic and social transformation. In other words, development that leads to peace must emphasize interventions that address unemployment and the infrastructural decay in the oil region. This concept of peace is explained in a Premium Times interview with Deirdre Lapin (an American scholar and development expert who had studied Nigeria for 45 years) concerning what the Nigerian government could do to develop the oil region. Lapin described the peacebuilding process as a development action plan that should be reviewed to support infrastructural investment focused on better housing, transportation networks, restoration of schools and health centers, and resource management (Olorunyoumi 2017). These development alternatives will serve to support social transformation and thereby promote lasting peace in the oil region. Development interventions that address socioeconomic inequities at the heart of the insurgency will most likely discourage a relapse into violence.

Peace as Nonviolence The concept of nonviolence is mostly understood as a method of social change. In Waging Nonviolent Struggle, a powerful analysis that focused on communities under threat or directly impacted by violence, Sharp

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(2005) reaffirms nonviolent action as a realistic alternative to passivity and violence. Throughout my research in the oil region, both the exinsurgents and non-insurgents alike used the term “nonviolence” with reference to the absence of threats to personal and community security. Thus, my study distinguishes nonviolent action as a method of resisting oppression and injustice or fostering reconciliation and peacebuilding from nonviolence as a state of peace. Rarely did I encounter an ex-insurgent who is averse to nonviolence. Their experience fighting in the creeks and their participation in nonviolence training have altogether given them a completely different orientation to peace. They derive peace from living in communities where overt behaviors that threaten to inflict physical harm or death upon individuals or communities are not a routine experience. The meaning of nonviolence includes the absence of life-threatening behaviors such as airstrikes, explosives, sexual assaults, kidnappings, and armed robbery that traumatize individuals and local communities. The concept of nonviolence introduced in this chapter corresponds to what Johan Galtung described as “positive peace”—a state of affairs in which social relationships that develop between actors lead to mutual well-being, and where new tensions do not escalate into violence and war (Galtung 1996; Galtung 2008). The idea that peace is synonymous with nonviolence finds expression in the lived experiences of individuals residing in coastal communities where violence is a routine experience, and where fighting, shooting, and killing are commonplace. Tilly (1969, 17) described this form of violence as “overt behaviors” that include actions such as armed insurgency, street protest, and destruction. These behavioral patterns manifest in Niger Delta communities where local populations routinely experience pipeline explosions arising from the activities of insurgents or airstrikes by military forces engaging in combat with insurgents. Most of these encounters end in people getting killed or sustaining grievous bodily harm. Peace implies the elimination of violence, the threat of violence, or the means of violence. Eliminating the means of violence requires an effort to disarm insurgents and destroy small arms and light weapons while encouraging nonviolent behavior through peace education.

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Peace as Stability One of the most effective steps the Nigerian government had taken to stabilize the oil region was to disarm the insurgents of small arms and ammunition. Research has shown that demilitarizing insurgents and reintegrating them into the political, social, and economic life of a postconflict society is an integral step in preventing a relapse into violence or attempts to disrupt the peace process (Berdal and Ucko 2009). While Nigeria’s DDR program is not without challenges, disarmament has undoubtedly brought stability to the region, and populations who inhabit those coastal communities that were adversely impacted by criminal activities perpetrated by armed groups now believe their communities are “peaceful.” One of the indicators of post-conflict stability was the resumption of business confidence in the oil region. Oil multinationals have since resumed their operations in communities where oil production activities were initially shut down due to instability. Now that armed groups are not kidnapping people or blowing up oil infrastructure, people can walk freely and conduct their business without fear. Individuals who until very recently were living in fear now live and work in an atmosphere of relative security and calmness. Throughout my research, both the ex-insurgents and non-insurgents generally equated peace with the level of stability they experience in their communities. The nature of stability refers primarily to improvements in the level of security and safety. This perception of peace is consistent with research by Ushie (2013), which showed that the implementation of peacebuilding brought some semblance of stability to the oil region. Research by McMullin (2013, 237) examined DDR processes in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Namibia, and Mozambique and concluded that insecurities arising during the DDR process were usually not the ex-insurgents returning to criminality, but violence erupting from land disputes and organized crime. Thus, DDR remains a principal tool for the transformation from war to peace (Massimo 2003). Post-conflict stabilization in the oil region underscores the importance of relationship building between oil multinationals and communities. These companies are valuable to indigenes from these communities

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because they constitute the only means of employment. As demonstrated in Chapter 3, those ex-insurgents who experienced the positive impact of the peacebuilding program have expressed an ideological rejection of violence having realized the importance of the oil corporations to the stability of the local communities through employment. As the study by Torjesen (2013, 4) illustrated, peacebuilding plays a critical role in the formal employment of ex-insurgents. It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that DDR creates a secure and stable post-conflict environment that is conducive for development. People derive their perception of peace from the stability of the post-conflict environment in which they live.

The Conceptual Challenge The most important conceptual challenge confronting the Niger Delta peacebuilding program is the nature of the DDR model. So far, it is unclear whether the DDR model corresponds to the mainstream “maximalist” (broad) or “minimalist” (narrow) approaches or whether it represents a unique, nationally driven intervention, as the peacebuilders generally describe it. According to Call and Cousens (2008), the minimalist-maximalist debate in post-conflict DDR is between peacebuilding advocates in support of a narrow reintegration process that aims to prevent the recurrence of conflict and those in support of a broad process that addresses deep-rooted inequalities that were the underlying causes of conflict, thus preventing future conflicts. This debate originated from the theoretical contention between conflict management and conflict transformation. As Miall (2004) noted, the former sees conflict as the absence of violence and directs conflict management intervention toward ending hostilities; the latter sees conflict as rooted in structures, meaning that peace goes beyond ending hostilities and actually transforms the structural roots of violence. The minimalist approach usually follows a short-term agenda with DDR programs focused more on giving ex-combatants temporary relief immediately following demobilization rather than aiming for a lasting impact on their lives, which can be time-consuming and cost-effective.

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However, the Nigerian case illustrates how DDR implementation has continued indefinitely and constitutes a huge financial burden on the nation. The UN Security Council, for example, calls for DDR programs in situations where peacekeeping operations are authorized and necessary to support the DDR process (McMullin 2013, 2). In contrast, the maximalist approach embraces an ambitious and transformative agenda based on long-term development of the reintegration program from inception. Reintegration activities usually focus on helping ex-combatants to become productive members of society with special attention given to reconciliation and reconstruction. This includes efforts to address the broader development challenges in the post-conflict society. Besides setting ambitious agendas that are often unrealistic and difficult to attain (Willems 2015), the maximalist approach suffers implementation challenges as it depends mostly on voluntary donations to fund reintegration programs so that access to funding becomes a critical consideration in post-conflict peacebuilding. In the Niger Delta context, resource constraints do not arise as a concern because the program is nationally funded with a substantial flow of resources in the billions of dollars from the national government to cover all peacebuilding activities. The challenge, however, lies in the peacebuilders’ reductionist understanding of peace as the end of hostilities, corresponding to a conflict management logic. This is different from a transformational philosophy that accommodates local perspectives on peacebuilding and seeks to eliminate the structural challenges that prompt the resumption of hostilities at repeated intervals.

Conclusion This chapter examined the conceptions of peace in Nigeria’s oil region as derived from local voices representing the perpetrators and victims. Peace is conceptualized as freedom, development, nonviolence, and stability. The relationship between peace and freedom underscores the impact of DDR in creating a secure post-conflict environment where inhabitants of the oil region feel liberated from threats posed by criminals. Peace is also defined with reference to development corresponding to economic interventions that enhance the status of individuals and communities

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through employment and infrastructural development. The nonviolence concept of peace refers to the reduction of hostilities and all forms of coercive mechanisms and structures. As Cerretti (2009) noted, a postconflict society needs to take steps toward preventing a relapse into violent conflict through disarmament of small arms. Nonviolence in this context is not a method of struggle but a state of positive peace. The conception of peace as stability stems directly from the perceived impact of peacebuilding processes in creating a safe and stable post-conflict environment. But as the next chapter will show, the level of stability in the oil region does not necessarily imply that those communities where insurgency has ended have achieved a state of sustainable peace. The fact remains that post-conflict peacebuilding that involves disarming the insurgents and giving them opportunities to denounce insurgency and criminality, contingent on the government’s effort to rehabilitate and reintegrate them, have only managed to punctuate the peace rather than transform the conflict. These conceptions of peace add new knowledge to our understanding of conflict transformation because they proceed from the view that local perspectives of peace must be acknowledged in efforts to prevent a relapse into insurgency—or at least a reduction in its intensity—while working toward achieving positive peacebuilding. The conclusion is that ex-insurgents can contribute in defining the parameters for the peace process if the peacebuilders recognize their agency and take into consideration their perspectives as vital to the design and implementation of post-conflict peacebuilding programs. The four conceptions of peace thus provide a framework for transformational peacebuilding.

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Ngwama, Justice Chidi. 2014. Kidnapping in Nigeria: An Emerging Social Crime and the Implications for The Labour Market. International Journal of Social Science 4 (1): 133–45. Olorunyoumi, Ladi. 2017. What Buhari Govt Must do to Develop Niger Delta, Implement Action Plan. June 18. Accessed July 20, 2020. https:// www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/234388-interview-buhari-govtmust-develop-niger-delta-implement-action-plan-development-expert.html. Oluyemi, Opeoluwa Adisa. 2020. The Military Dimension of Niger Delta Crisis and its Implications on Nigeria National Security. SAGE Open (April): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020922895. Oriola, Temitope. 2012. The Delta Creeks, Women’s Engagement, and Nigeria’s Oil Insurgency. British Journal of Criminology 52 (3): 534–55. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azs009. Sharp, Gene. 2005. Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential . Boston, MA: Porters Sargent Publishers. Thom-Otuya, Ben. 2010. Kidnapping: A Challenge to Nigeria Security System. International Journal of Social Sciences 2 (8): 107–16. Tilly, Charles. 1969. Collective Violence in European Perspective. In Violence in America, ed. H. A. Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, 4–45. New York, NY: Bantam. Torjesen, Stina. 2013. Towards a Theory of Ex-Combatant Reintegration. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development 2 (3): 1–13. Accessed June 21, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/sta.cx. United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 2006. Niger Delta Human Development Report. Abuja: UNDP Nigeria. Accessed March 12, 2020. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-report. Ushie, Vanessa. 2013. Nigeria’s Amnesty Programme as a Peacebuilding Infrastructure: A Silver Bullet? Journal of Peacebuilding and Development 8 (1): 30–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2013.789255. Utin, Inwang B. 2018. Insurgency, Counter Insurgency and Human Rights Violation in the Niger Delta. International Journal of Educational Research and Technology 9 (3): 62–66. Watts, Michael. 2007. Petro-Insurgency or Criminal Syndicate? Conflict and Violence in the Niger Delta. Review of African Political Economy 114: 637– 60. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1080/03056240701819517. Willems, Rens C. 2015. Security and Hybridity After Armed Conflict: The Dynamics of Security Provision in Post-Civil War States. Oxon, UK: Routledge.

8 Towards a Theory of Punctuated Peace

In the aftermath of Nigeria’s oil insurgency, some theoretical questions have arisen regarding the extent to which fundamental peacebuilding processes such as DDR are possible in the attempt to establish a stable post-conflict environment for nurturing durable peace amidst a growing swell of animosities from identity groups. Critics of the peacebuilding program have raised critical concerns about its efficacy and sustainability (Davidheiser and Nyiayaana 2011; Aghedo 2012; Ushie 2013; Obi 2014; Iwilade 2017). These questions have become necessary in light of Iwilade’s (2017) argument that insurgents manipulated the peace process as a means of transforming the neo-patrimonial system in the oil region, or that amnesty was a reactive intervention designed to restore security rather than a humanitarian endeavor, as argued by Ajayi and Adesote (2013). As important as these arguments are in highlighting the weaknesses in the peace process, we cannot dismiss the tremendous success achieved thus far. As some analysts have pointed out, amnesty has been successful in stabilizing the oil region but remains an ineffective strategy for eliminating insurgency in the long term (Aghedo 2012; Agbiboa 2015). While insecurities arising from the activities of local © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 O. Okoi, Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2_8

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insurgents that warranted amnesty have reduced drastically, new forms of insecurities keep arising from the perceived failure of the peacebuilding program. Amnesty thus represents a means to an end rather than an end in itself (Schultze-Kraft 2017). But these arguments limit our knowledge of the instrumentality of peacebuilding. As such, a discussion on the nature of peace is lacking. The theoretical question, then, is whether post-conflict stabilization in the oil region correlates with the achievement of peace, and how do we theorize the nature of peace? These questions are largely centered around the notions of negative peace, the absence of direct violence, and positive peace, the elimination of human suffering caused by unjust societal structures (Galtung 1969, 1981). Upon an examination of the post-conflict environment in the oil region between 2009 and 2019, it became evident that the nature of peace does not correspond to either negative or positive peace. Even the assertion that DDR can lead to the achievement of positive peace is met with skepticism. In this chapter, I review the major findings of the previous thematic chapters and develop an overarching analysis of punctuated peace as a theoretical concept that explains the nature of peace in the oil region. Punctuated peace theory states that the stability of a post-conflict society is not a determinant of positive peace, and that under certain conditions, a stable post-conflict society may relapse into repeated cycles of destructive conflict that will punctuate the progression of peace. The theoretical argument is that since 2009, Nigeria’s oil region has been in a state of punctuated peace. Punctuated peace theory highlights the obstacles to the goal of positive peace, particularly the ramifications that the depoliticization of peace has on both epistemological and pragmatic levels of peacebuilding.

The Premise of Punctuated Peace Theory One of the responses to the post-Cold War political environment was Boutros-Ghali’s (1995) Agenda for Peace, which identified post-conflict peacebuilding as an emerging category under UN peace operations. Postconflict peacebuilding was defined as “actions to identify and support

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structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace to avoid a relapse into conflict” (Boutros-Ghali 1995, 46). The growing challenge in post-conflict societies prompted the UN Security Council to release a statement in February 2001 recognizing peacebuilding as a mechanism for conflict prevention (United Nations Security Council 2001). Peacebuilding has become increasingly important because post-conflict societies face the risk of relapsing into war as ex-combatants re-arm to take advantage of political opportunities presented by weak state capacity and social fragmentation within conflict-affected societies (Alden 2002; Spear 2002; Gamba 2003). Research by Stedman and Rothchild (1996) identified a multiplicity of security concerns ranging from political to military, to economic and cultural, as vital to peacebuilding. They cite the role of the international community along with confidence-building measures that should be built into the peace process. The concern for international peacebuilding is an internal political approach that focuses the attention of peacebuilders on the unique dynamics of each post-conflict society (Cousens et al. 2001, 183). The recognition of these unique dynamics calls for theoretical inquiry into the nature of peace. The starting point of this discussion is the theoretical tension between conflict management, conflict resolution, and conflict transformation. These approaches to conflict have markedly different assumptions that overlap in significant ways but provide the ontological foundation for theorizing the nature of peace. Conflict transformation theory became popularized through intellectual debates in the early nineties led by Fisher and Keashly (1991) and Bercovitch and Rubin (1992). These debates were ultimately successful in their attempt to bridge conflict resolution and conflict management approaches without undermining the fact that these approaches do overlap. As Miall (2004, 3) noted, conflict management theorists view conflict as the consequence of incompatible differences in values and interests between parties. It arises from the institutional structure of society, complex historical relations, and unequal power dynamics. Since variations in interests and values are entrenched in historical experiences, distribution of resources, and institutional settings, they cannot be resolved but managed through interventions designed to prevent

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conflict escalation. In this regard, conflict management is viewed as the design of interventions and institutions that enable third parties to achieve a political settlement of a conflict by using their resources and influence to guide conflicting parties into a mutually beneficial future (Miall 2004). According to Bloomberg and Reilly (1998, 18), conflict management involves bringing opposing parties together in a cooperative process to design a practical and achievable system for the “constructive management” of differences. However, the systemic approach to conflict management has been criticized by conflict resolution theorists on the basis that it ignores identity issues that often produce conflict. Conflict resolution theorists also challenge the assumption that parties to a conflict must necessarily reach a compromise on their fundamental needs. Unlike conflict management where powerful third parties operate within the political system, conflict resolution involves skilled but less powerful third-party actors helping the adversaries to explore the roots of the problem and readjust their positions and interests toward a mutually beneficial outcome (Miall 2004). According to Ramsbotham et al. (2009, 15–16), conflict resolution involves outsiders helping conflicted parties to readjust their perception of the conflict/problem and then assisting them in reframing their positions toward a win-win outcome. Third parties help the adversaries to see things differently and move from destructive to constructive outcomes. While the underlying interests of actors might be easier to reconcile through the reframing of positions, difficulties arise when the conflict structure is embedded in relationships that need to be transformed rather than managed or resolved (Miall 2004; Ramsbotham et al. 2009). In contrast to conflict management and resolution, conflict transformation provides a deeper understanding of conflict. The intellectual contours of conflict transformation theory were mapped through the path-breaking work of Galtung (1969), who showed how a convergence of structural, historical, and cultural factors produce violence. Other prominent thinkers like Curl (1971) have made equally significant contributions to conflict transformation thinking by emphasizing the importance of relationship transformation. For Ramsbotham et al. (2009, 29), conflict transformation represents a profound change in the “institutions, discourses, and processes that produce

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violence, and in the conflict actors and their interactions.” The context of transformation involves an examination of the structural and relational patterns that create conflict. According to Lederach (2003, 14), transformation is to “envision and respond to the ebb and flow of social conflict by creating constructive change processes that reduce violence, increase justice, and respond to real-life problems in human relationships.” This theoretical foundation has profound implications for the evolution of peace studies. A theoretical shift away from evaluating peace against the absence of direct physical violence (negative peace) now turns to a renewed theoretical focus on structural and relationship transformation. Despite the growth in the conflict transformation literature, the existing body of knowledge provides insufficient tools for understanding the possibility of achieving positive peace in a post-conflict society that relapses into repeated cycles of destructive conflict as identity groups mobilize insurgency as a means of getting the state to commit to negotiations. At the same time, the idea of punctuated peace invokes the intellectual reinvention of peace studies with a renewed theoretical focus on the obstacles to the goal of positive peace.

A Theory of Punctuated Peace The premise of the Niger Delta peace process was that granting amnesty to armed insurgents would serve as a foundation for peace and development. According to Freeman (2010, 3), amnesty was the most viable option likely to bring an end to the insurgency. Adeyemo and OluAdeyemi (2010) contend, however, that in the context of Nigeria’s peace process, amnesty exists in a “vacuum.” The idea of “amnesty in a vacuum” suggests that the presidential proclamation of amnesty followed neither the principles of a “negotiated settlement” or “victor’s justice” considered to be the most common scenarios for the application of amnesty. A negotiated settlement is necessary where the conflict parties have fought until there is nothing to fight about and decide to explore peaceful options. Research by Johnson (2007) on the Civil War in Darfur shows that governments can use negotiated settlement as a peace strategy to co-opt rebel factions and thereby project their political agendas and improve

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their prospects for counterinsurgency operations. Unlike a negotiated settlement, “victor’s justice” applies to a situation whereby one of the conflict parties decides to claim victory and grants amnesty as an exception to its right to punish the adversary. In the Niger Delta context, there was neither a need for a “negotiated settlement” nor “victor’s justice.” As stated in Chapter 1, peacebuilding in the oil region is, at present, an ad hoc response to insurgency. As such, what Akinwale (2010, 205) described as “amnesty peace” has little or no conceptual basis since DDR interventions focused exclusively on addressing the needs of exinsurgents while neglecting other forms of insecurity. This corresponds to a negative peace. In order to establish a theory of punctuated peace and demonstrate why the aspiration of positive peace would be difficult to realize in the oil region, it is necessary to highlight some of the ambiguities inherent in the current peacebuilding structure. Punctuated peace theory develops from studying the life cycle of the Niger Delta insurgency and peace process to understand the patterns of conflict escalation and de-escalation over time, as well as the conditions that produce these dynamics. I define punctuated peace as the periodic interruption of a peace process by armed groups such that the revival of insurgency, at frequent intervals, presents an obstacle to positive peace. Punctuated peace theory develops from the assumption that once insurgents are given the opportunity to reintegrate into society through a range of transformative processes that support fundamental changes in their attitudes and behaviors, society will be stable. However, the peace process may collapse at periodic intervals under four conditions. They include exclusion, the role of conflict entrepreneurs, corruption, and problems with peacebuilding design.

Exclusion While addressing journalists during the executive and stakeholders congress of the Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) held in Port Harcourt on April 25, 2021, IYC president Timothy Igbefa gave the federal government a one-month ultimatum to inaugurate a substantive board for the Niger Delta Development Commission so that development activities could resume in the region. Failing this, they risked an insurgency that would

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result in a total shutdown of the oil region (Oyadongha 2021). This threat came after a decade of implementing the peacebuilding program, and it suggests that a renewed critical focus on the nature of peace is imperative. This development is not surprising given that societies emerging from war are often at risk of relapsing into repeated cycles of insurgency due to structural issues, such as exclusion. As indicated in Chapter 3, El Salvador is an example of a post-conflict society that relapsed into war when ex-combatants re-armed to disrupt the peace process (Williams and Walter 1997). The post-conflict environment in the oil region was polarized by short-term periods of instability arising from the need for economic participation among ex-insurgents who felt that the peacebuilders marginalized their needs after they surrendered their arms. The critical concerns raised by the Ijaw Youth Council leader, who felt that the absence of a substantive NDDC board had slowed development in the oil region while the North East Development Commission received much attention, revived longstanding concerns about exclusion. The current situation in the oil region is such that grievances arising from exclusion presents a strategic danger where the future may see revived insurgency in the area, as shown in the theoretical model in Fig. 8.1. The development of punctuated peace as a theoretical concept is an important part of providing some empirical consistency in the conflict transformation literature. Such an effort begins by acknowledging the positive impact the peacebuilding program has had in ending armed confrontations between ex-insurgents and the state, at least temporarily. Punctuated peace theory builds on the assumption that the management of the Niger Delta conflict has both peace-affirming and peacethreatening aspects that bring to light the positive and negative consequences of peacebuilding. Peace-affirming aspects are those interventions that not only demilitarize the region by taking arms from insurgents, but also focuses on their personal and social transformation. On the contrary, peace-threatening aspects are those interventions that alienate some insurgents who subsequently exploit violence for personal gain. The processes of empowering the ex-insurgents also revive concerns about exclusion. Because the economic benefits of peacemaking are awarded disproportionately, they empower some actors while alienating others. Perceptions of alienation combine with deep-seated feelings

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Long-term period of stability

Y Short-term period of stability

The progression of peace

PaƩern of Instability

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Fig. 8.1 A model of punctuated peace

of worthlessness generated by employment discrimination in the oil industry. This magnifies the inequities in the peace process, what I describe in Chapter 5 as Devaluation-Alienation. The fact remains that peace cannot be sustained in a post-conflict society where ex-insurgents feel they have been excluded from the benefits of peacebuilding. As time passes, the need for economic participation would revive negative attitudes that can lead to repeated interruptions in the peace process, as shown in Fig. 8.1. The idea that individuals measure their well-being relative to what other members of society possess has its origins in the writings of Karl Marx, who applied relative deprivation in his analysis of class conflict and the challenges that emerged with the rise of capitalism. Despite the long history of relative deprivation in the social sciences, the importance attached to this idea in the study of human behavior was overlooked by scholars until the second half of the twentieth century when social scientists began to study the impact of relative deprivation on social behavior (Heck and Wech 2003). In The American Soldier,

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Stouffer (1949) observed that American soldiers who fought in World War II evaluated their personal success based on their experience in the respective units where they served rather than the general standards in the United States Armed Forces. Adams (1970) noted that while Stouffer initially developed relative deprivation theory to understand the psychology of American soldiers during the war, the theory gained wide acceptance among social scientists as a pioneering effort in combining theory and empirical research to explain human behavior. Runciman (1966) theorized relative deprivation as the sense of frustration that develops in people when they observe other people enjoying opportunities or possessing things they desire and may be within their reach, but that they cannot attain themselves. Relative deprivation theory acquired new life following the seminal publication of Gurr (1970) entitled Why Men Rebel , which examined why people engage in political violence. His hypothesis was that “the potential for collective violence varies strongly with the intensity and scope of relative deprivation among members of a collectivist” (Gurr 1970, 24). For Gurr, discontent arises from the gap between people’s actual entitlements and what they believe is due to them. When a significant gap exists between people’s entitlement and what they believe they can achieve, rebellion is the likely outcome. To put this in context, a post-conflict society such as Nigeria’s oil region is at risk of relapsing into repeated cycles of insurgency due to the discrepancy between goal expectations (or what ex-insurgents think they deserve from the peace process) and achievement (what they actually think they can achieve from their participation in the peacebuilding program). Thus, relative deprivation can be understood as the main variable that explains why those who feel excluded from the material benefits of peacebuilding will resume violence at repeated intervals to get the government to commit to further negotiations. This analysis adds substantial theoretical insight to the role that exclusion plays in the development of punctuated peace. It is important to point out that punctuated peace theory complements the fundamental weakness of relative deprivation theory, which is its inability to explain why some individuals who have been relatively deprived fail to participate in violence against those perceived to be the cause of their deprivation. In the context of my study, the failure of

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the peacebuilders to direct interventions toward the unemployment challenges confronting community youth who do not benefit from the peace economy remains a strategic danger. Perhaps the peacebuilding program ignored the threats posed to non-combatant civilians in the oil region as a potential source of instability. Massimo (2003) noted that while DDR has gained relevance as a principal tool in the transformation from war to peace, a significant component of the DDR framework is the focus on highlighting the threats posed to civilians in post-conflict societies. According to Aghedo (2012), achieving sustainable peace in the oil region would require an effort to identify the incentives for violence and the longstanding grievances of marginalized constituencies. Even though confrontational struggles between the state and insurgents may have ended, the coastal communities often experience threats to the security of civilians, and in most cases, insurgent groups have renewed their hostilities on oil facilities or threatened to do so unless some conditions are met. These complex and intractable challenges call attention to punctuated peace.

The Role of Conflict Entrepreneurs Conflict entrepreneurs have become an increasingly important variable when analyzing the collapse and revival of peace processes in Africa. Research by Holmqvist (2012, 16) showed that in Angola, Columbia, and Afghanistan, conflict entrepreneurs such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and the Taliban mobilized ethnic grievances, geography, class, and religion as convenient tools for insurgency. As pointed out in Chapter 5, conflict entrepreneurs who perceive threats to their political and economic interests can exploit ethnicity as a convenient tool to mobilize support for insurgency. The emergence of the NDA in February 2016—its ideology, violent activities, and mode of operation—is an example of an insurgent group threatening to disrupt a stable, post-conflict society. One predictor of punctuated peace in the oil region is the growing realization that any group with a grievance can mobilize arms to blow

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up oil infrastructure as a means of negotiating with the government. Efforts to control the political undertakings of conflict entrepreneurs must include eliminating their funding sources (Holmqvist 2012). However, this proposition will create a potentially dangerous situation in Nigeria’s oil region where ex-insurgents have threatened to resume hostilities should the federal government ever decide to terminate the peacebuilding program that provides an economic lifeline through their monetary benefits. The fact that many conflict entrepreneurs survive on the monetary benefits from the peacebuilding program has set a dangerous trajectory for future insurgencies in the oil region, some of which might be motivated by primordial ethnic grievances. The concept of political retribution discussed in Chapter 5, which explains the factors leading to the collapse of peace in the oil region following the emergence of the NDA in 2016, gives further validation to the punctuated peace theory. So far, the NDA have had the most destructive impact on the oil insurgency within the shortest period of time compared to the previous wave of insurgency championed by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND. The difference, however, is that unlike the previous insurgent groups that perpetrated criminal atrocities, such as sea piracy and kidnapping, the NDA did not engage in activities that threatened individual security. Instead, its attacks were strategic to its goal of destabilizing Nigeria’s economy by targeting critical infrastructure and causing a massive decline in oil output amid falling oil prices that further deepened Nigeria’s recession. This illustrates how conflict entrepreneurs with vested interests in the oil economy can revive insurgency by creating new sites of power and contestation in post-conflict societies that have achieved some level of stability, an important implication for punctuated peace theory.

Impact of Corruption One of the profound observations that emerged from my ethnographic exploration of the peacebuilding landscape in the oil region was the severity of corruption. It was obvious from my interaction with the exinsurgents and non-insurgents that a well-intentioned program became

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bastardized and ended up as money down the drain. The fact remains that corruption has become part of the political economy of peacebuilding in the oil region, and the peacebuilders are implicated in this contradiction. Corruption manifests in many ways, including the diversion of peacebuilding funds by officials entrusted with the responsibility to oversee, manage, coordinate, or supervise a variety of peacebuilding processes (Okoi 2020). It seems plausible that corruption not only defines the character of the peacebuilding process, but it also is one of the most important predictors of punctuated peace. In order to understand the dynamics of corruption in the peacebuilding process, some questions need to be answered. First, we need to examine who is implementing the peacebuilding program, who is involved in mobilizing insurgents for the program, and what is the composition of the program participants. Then we need to take a step further to understand who has control over the amnesty database and who is responsible for shortlisting candidates for scholarship and training opportunities within and outside Nigeria. An audit of these peacebuilding processes will reveal any corrupt practices that exist. One shocking discovery was the monumental corruption in the training of insurgents at local and foreign universities. Shortly after the appointment of Charles Dokubo, a former research professor at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, as coordinator of Presidential Amnesty Program (PAP) in 2018, his office received invoices from local academic institutions requesting payment for tuition and allowances for the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship students purportedly pursuing studies in these institutions during the 2017–2018 academic session. Alarmed and suspicious of corruption, Dokubo launched an investigative committee to ascertain the legitimacy of these transactions. The committee investigated the processes involved with the 1,061 amnesty students enrolled in the respective educational institutions in March 2018, whether these students were legitimate amnesty delegates, and if their admission to these institutions followed due process. The committee’s findings revealed that only 314 of the 1,061 students were pursuing genuine studies under the Presidential Amnesty Scholarship. The remaining 747 students could not be accounted for. This exemplifies

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how corrupt practices perpetrated by peacebuilders have denied thousands of youths in the oil region the opportunity to access education and upgrade their economic status. This level of corruption and its impact on the peace process constitute a strategic danger that has increased the risk of future insurgency in the oil region. In Chapter 4, I showed how the technocratic model of empowering ex-insurgents fostered corruption through the diversion of peacebuilding resources. I noted that some ex-insurgents felt disempowered because either the training they received was substandard and did not prepare them for work in the oil industry or that their certifications did not meet the standard for Nigeria’s oil industry. So long as corrupt practices within the peacebuilding infrastructure continue to alienate some actors, those insurgents who have suspended hostilities have greater incentive to resume violence. Senegal is an example of a country that has survived forty years of uninterrupted rule, and it has been considered a model for stability in West Africa (Leichtman 2019). While the 2000 Senegalese election demonstrated a peaceful transition to opposition rule, persistent corruption has seen the nation sliding toward instability. It is evident from these examples that the rent-seeking opportunities that come with corruption (especially in a societal context where unequal access to natural resource wealth is implicated in the pattern of insurgency) can provide incentives for future insurgency. Those excluded from opportunities that have the potential to transform their lives may use violence to gain access to these opportunities. The role corruption plays in the dynamics of exclusion offers an incentive for violence, leading to a punctuated peace process.

Problems with Peacebuilding Design The fourth condition for punctuated peace underscores the nature of peacebuilding design. Even though the peacebuilders framed peacebuilding as a transformational project, what seems to be happening on the ground is conflict management. According to Miall (2004, 69), conflict management involves interventions to achieve a political settlement, particularly by “those actors having the power and resources to

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bring pressure on the conflict parties in order to settle their differences.” By working through a conflict management framework, the peacebuilders have been implementing DDR for over a decade without engaging the ex-insurgents in the evaluation of its outcomes, including whether the interventions being implemented have been successful in addressing the root causes of violence as well as social justice issues in the oil region. As grievances build up over time and eventually escalate into an insurgency that threatens to destabilize a stable post-conflict society, it punctuates progress toward positive peacebuilding. Challenges such as this underscore the failure of peacebuilding design. Punctuated peace is most often the result of failures that occur in peacebuilding processes when peacebuilders attempt to implement technical strategies in local contexts. Cousens et al. (2001) examined peacebuilding programs in Cambodia, El Salvador, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, and Somalia to determine their successes and failures. They realized international peacebuilding often focuses on external and technical solutions that appease special interest groups outside the conflicted region and may be irrelevant in societies where war has damaged infrastructure—e.g., clean drinking water is of much greater importance to local constituents. It is important, therefore, that peacebuilders consider the importance of local context when designing peacebuilding interventions. While post-conflict peacebuilding in the oil region has produced long and short periods of stability over time, it serves to strengthen palliative measures that have been successful in stabilizing the oil region without necessarily transforming the complex realities of inequality. Periodic instability in the post-conflict environment is the result of the failure of peacebuilders to direct attention to the critical needs of the exinsurgents and other inhabitants of the coastal communities who were excluded from the benefits of peacebuilding. As Galtung (1976) noted, peacebuilding structures need to focus on transforming the root causes of violent conflicts while also supporting the capacity of local actors to resolve conflict. Lederach (1997) referred to these peacebuilding structures as an attempt to achieve “sustainable peace,” pointing to mechanisms that promote justice and address the underlying tensions that create the conditions for conflict in the society as a whole. Peace is possible when the designers of peacebuilding

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programs focus more broadly on addressing power differentials that arise in post-conflict societies and put in place measures to prevent these societies from sliding into repeated cycles of conflict.

A Model of Punctuated Peace The model in Fig. 8.1 shows how the progression of peace is punctuated by repeated cycles of insurgency over time. Change on the Y-axis is plotted against time on the X-axis indicating the pattern of stability and instability in the oil region corresponding to the conflict escalation and de-escalation dynamics presented in Chapter 5. The philosophical rationale is that Nigeria’s oil insurgency built up from historical struggles that began during the colonial era in the late 1950s and escalated dramatically in the 2000s. The dynamics of conflict escalation is juxtaposed with the emergence of the peacebuilding program in 2009. Since then, the oil region has experienced stability for seven years before the peace process collapsed in early 2016 following the emergence of the NDA. The sophistication of the NDA attacks dealt a devastating blow to the nation’s economy, cutting national oil output by half. Prior to the NDA insurgency, there had been short-term disruptions in the peace process through the activities of groups such as the Third Phase Militants, who resumed violence and kidnapping to compel the federal government to enlist its members in the peacebuilding program for the financial benefits. This category of insurgents included individuals who had initially accepted amnesty but did not participate in the demobilization process for fear that the federal government was planning to use amnesty as a strategy to arrest and prosecute them for their involvement in criminal activities. Violence resumed in the oil region when youth in the local communities began to realize the transformative impact of the peacebuilding program, particularly on the lives of ex-insurgents who returned from overseas training as highly educated and skilled citizens. The desire to benefit from the monetary incentives accruing to the ex-insurgents was another trigger for violence. The pattern of instability is arguably the result of dissatisfaction with the outcome of the peacebuilding program, particularly its contribution

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to win-lose situations that became necessary to challenge by means of violence. This realization gave impetus to the formation of new insurgent groups demanding inclusion. Following the transition from war to peace in 2009 and the subsequent ceasefire by the NDA in 2016, it seemed that peace had returned to the oil region. However, the attitude of ex-insurgents suggests that even though the oil region has been stable for some time due to the suspension of hostilities, the government has yet to address some of the structural causes of insurgency that would create the condition for positive peace. For example, the effects of oil extraction on infectious diseases and air, water, and land pollution that infringes on the rights of vulnerable communities throughout the oil region continues to threaten the prospects of positive peace. As Jeong (2000) noted, violent structures such as environmental degradation infringe on the rights of vulnerable populations. Thus, conflict develops when individuals act to express their feelings, articulate their perceptions, and meet their needs (Meyer 2000, 5). Within this context, violence in the oil region is not necessarily physical but also structural and institutional. While the physical manifestation of violence has been suspended, the structural and institutional manifestations are ongoing. Thus, death in Nigeria’s oil region is not necessarily caused by guns and bombs, but by people’s exposure to risks such as an endangered environment, water pollution, avoidable diseases, and lack of access to opportunity. So long as vulnerable populations continue to perceive their suffering in relation to these structural conditions, any peace process in place will be punctuated by a relapse into insurgency. Moreover, punctuated peace is the likelihood of a post-conflict society relapsing into insurgency as a domestically vulnerable government uses material incentives to buy off insurgents. The progression of positive peace can be punctuated at repeated intervals when these incentives motivate other marginalized groups to mobilize insurgency as a means of negotiating their access to the economic opportunities they were denied. This links punctuated peace with what researchers describe as “rentier peace,” whereby regimes use natural resources rents to buy off peace (Oetzel et al. 2007; Basedau and Lay 2009; Idemudia 2014), or

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“amnesty peace” (Akinwale 2010). These concepts correspond to negative peace whereby the absence of direct violence does not necessarily resolve a conflict (Galtung 1964, 1969). However, the acceptance of negative peace radically changed in the 1980s and shifted toward a positive conception of peace, understood as the absence of all forms of injustices and social inequities (Galtung 1996). Galtung refers to these social inequities as structural violence. Since peacebuilding generally implies the promotion of positive peace, analysis of any peace ought to focus on addressing developments within the oil region that impede progress toward positive peace. The concept of negative peace thus provides the theoretical foundation for punctuated peace theory. As Fig. 8.1 has shown, the main impediments to positive peace are not just structural but a combination of structural, institutional, and political contradictions. Because conflict often arises from needs deprivation produced through poverty, inequality, and marginalization (Holmqvist 2012, 16), insights from conflict transformation thinking provide a sound conceptual footing for the development of punctuated peace theory. While there is currently no evidence of armed confrontations between insurgent groups and the state, poverty and exclusion continues to define the reality of many individuals. These challenges, if not addressed as sustainably as possible, will become the predictors of future insurgencies that will punctuate the progression of positive peace. Instability can arise from the undertakings of identity groups who perceive fundamental threats to their interests. Further evidence of punctuated peace points to the challenge of company-community relations in the oil region. While the peacebuilding process has enabled businesses to resume operations, the posture of major oil multinationals, such as Shell and Chevron, who are increasingly moving their operations upstream to avoid the frequent attacks by insurgent groups, suggests that businesses have yet to revive full confidence in the peace process. This observation was important because the decision by oil multinationals to move their operations to low-conflict havens is due to the threat of future insecurity. In the long term, these decisions may have severe consequences for the loss of employment opportunities in the local communities and could lead to youth uprisings.

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Evidence of Punctuated Peace in Other Post-conflict Societies Across Africa The African continent is replete with examples of post-conflict societies where DDR initiatives failed to prevent the resurgence of rebel forces. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one such example. Kisangani (2012) noted that like many African countries, the DRC has been an unstable society whose problems date back to its colonial history when the Belgians established a political system that focused on natural resource extraction rather than addressing the needs of the locals. Research has shown that the conflicts in eastern DRC emerged from struggles over natural resources and land rights, the politics of exclusion, economic motives for violence, limited state sovereignty in some areas, the absence of the rule of law, gross violation of human rights, and external interference (Autesserre 2010; Mutisi 2016). Despite significant efforts toward securing peace in the DRC, the eastern region remains the site of persistent communal conflict and local insurgencies that often merge with cross-border insurgencies and regional conflicts. The civilian populations are often on the receiving end of these unremitting clashes, displacements, massacres, widespread sexual violence, and human rights violations (Autesserre 2010; Mutisi 2016). Although the international community has undertaken several peacebuilding interventions in the DRC, including helping the conflict parties to negotiate a peace accord, the DRC has since its independence been the site of continuous attempts to address the nation’s protracted conflict. The instability in the DRC is due to the tragic consequence of failing to address the local causes of violence while relying on international experts and mediation efforts that have altogether proven ineffective and unsustainable. According to Autesserre (2010, 11–12), the international peacebuilding culture imposed on the DRC exacerbated the violence and atrocities, although local actors first viewed the top-down intervention as a success until war regenerated in late 2008. The experience in the DRC exemplifies how despite the significance of DDR interventions, other DDR campaigns in Africa produced mixed results. In all instances, demilitarized societies frequently experience a relapse into armed conflict, what I call punctuated peace.

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Research by Zena (2013) showed that the DDR program in the Great Lakes region in Africa cost nearly $500 million in order to disarm and demobilize 300,000 combatants in seven countries. Despite this effort, the region regularly experiences a resurgence of armed rebellion driven by former rebel forces in eastern DRC, resulting in death tolls, population displacement, and the recruitment of militias (Zena 2013, 2). In the Central African Republic, nearly 20,000 militias waiting for the implementation of the country’s DDR program since 2009 got frustrated by the delays and decided to re-arm, resulting in a relapse into war and the heightening of instability (Zena 2013, 1–2). Zena’s study further revealed that in South Sudan, the fledgling government made coordinated efforts to launch a disarmament program with the aim to downsize its security forces by 150,000 personnel at the same time they mounted a similar effort to disarm the local militias and prevent the recurrence of inter-communal violence. Cubitt (2011) examined the complexity of civil war and state failure, and the challenge of peacebuilding and state-building interventions following the end of the civil war in Sierra Leone that devastated the entire nation. Her study uncovered the challenges confronting postconflict reconstruction processes in the Sierra Leonean context, particularly how international peacebuilding interventions driven by liberal peacebuilding policies undermined local priorities because of a limited understanding of local and national capabilities. Based on these discoveries, Cubitt proposed the need to incorporate national priorities in international peacebuilding frameworks. This would ensure that post-conflict reconstruction interventions focus on institutional reform, particularly as the judicial system in post-conflict societies are often undermined by the liberal peacebuilding project (Cubitt 2011). The inadequacies of top-down DDR interventions in resolving local tensions often create situations whereby demilitarized regions relapse into repeated cycles of armed conflict. In some countries, like Angola, local peacebuilding interventions have resisted the liberal peacebuilding framework. Unlike the Nigerian peacebuilding structure that is nationally-oriented but builds implicitly on the prescriptions of the liberal DDR framework, post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Angola, which occurred as a response to the aftermath of

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the civil war that ended in 2002, represents a departure from the international liberal peacebuilding framework. De Oliveira (2011) described the Angolan model as “illiberal peacebuilding” because it represents a post-war reconstruction process driven specifically by local elites resisting the dominant liberal peacebuilding principles. These principles promote the expansion of free-market economies and poverty alleviation ideas and are perceived as enthroning a hegemonic order with a preponderance of political and economic elites rather than the local political economy (De Oliveira 2011). The Angolan peacebuilding model shares a striking similarity to that of Rwanda. While these examples underscore the failure of liberal peacebuilding in Africa, they give theoretical validity to punctuated peace. Punctuated peace defines the nature of peace in societies like the DRC, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, and the Niger Delta, where peace processes fail to address the underlying local tensions and eventually create the conditions for a relapse into armed conflict. Westendorf (2015, 232) contends that although fundamentally different contexts, there is ample evidence to suggest that post-conflict peacebuilding processes in “South Sudan, Liberia, Mozambique, and Cambodia share similar characteristics, such as the experience of instability, mistrust and insecurity, and the disposition to a violent political culture.” In these societies, natural resource abundance and social inequality often revive the activities of armed groups who recruit disaffected youths by providing them with opportunities their own governments deprived them of. The concept of punctuated peace, therefore, defines the nature of peace in Nigeria’s oil region where local insurgents often construct their struggle around questions of resource ownership and exclusion, while the peacebuilding process has mostly focused on interventions that ignore these regional dynamics, creating the condition for a relapse into insurgency at repeated intervals.

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Evidence of Punctuated Peace in Sri Lanka, Columbia, and Northern Ireland The impact of colonialism on ethnic and political marginalization of minority groups in Sri Lanka led to a protracted civil war between the Sinhalese-dominated government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan (LTTE)—a separatist group fighting for independence for Hindu Tamils. The implementation of a DDR program as an instrument of post-conflict peacebuilding has been less successful in bringing lasting peace to Sri Lanka because it serves as a political project that enables the military to express its victory over the LTTE without a realistic effort to disarm and demobilize the armed groups (Kamalasiri et al. 2020). Åkebo and Bastian (2021) attributed the failure of liberal peacebuilding in Sri Lanka to nationalism, militarization, and violence, which manifested as features of the post-war peace project. Their analysis moves beyond the failure of liberal peacebuilding to show how the post-war peace project in Sri Lanka was shaped by processes of state formation designed to consolidate military presence in those territories that were under the control of the LTTE. Despite the efforts of the Norwegian government in negotiating a compromise leading to a ceasefire in 2002, the government had continued with its militarization strategy. It is not surprising that after four years of post-conflict stability, conflict between the government and the LTTE revived. The Easter Sunday bombing in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, on 21 April 2019, which killed nearly 300 and injured hundreds, exemplifies the punctuated nature of peace that develops from the failure of compromise. Furthermore, punctuated peace theory gives explanation to the failure of the Colombian peace process. Since 1982, the Colombian government has tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a compromise with revolutionary armed groups. The country has failed six times out of the seven attempts to implement DDR programs. The implementation of a DDR program became possible following the adoption of a peace agreement in November 2016. A referendum took place in which the Colombian people rejected the peace deal signed between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) while also expressing their disapproval of the government’s plan to reward ex-combatant FARC

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rebels with a monthly stipend and financial assistance to those interested in starting a business. By July 2017, FARC ex-combatants had been disarmed and demobilized successfully, marking the transformation of FARC from an armed group to a powerful political movement in Colombia. Based on this success, Colombia’s DDR program has been referenced repeatedly as a model of how armed groups can be disbanded from their paramilitary structure and ex-combatants reintegrated into civilian society. Derks et al. (2011, 3–4) contend, however, that the demobilization of Colombia’s guerilla fighters was designed to extract information for military purposes and to reduce the intensity of violence while it left unaddressed the political, economic, and criminal roots of the conflict. This led to the rise of new criminal forces who eventually inherited the command structures of the paramilitary groups. Concerns arose in Columbia when FARC ex-combatants began to regroup (Derks et al. 2011), suggesting that the DDR program did not successfully disband these rebel forces. The fact that the peace process ignored structural problems that became a motivation for rebel groups to re-arm, gives validity to punctuated peace theory. Northern Ireland presents another example of a protracted conflict between Catholics and the Protestant-dominated government that culminated in a compromise, yet where the progression of peace was punctuated by the resumption of conflict. The conflict started in the late 1960s when the Catholic minority began protesting their discrimination by the Protestants. Byrne (2001) notes that between 1972 and 1985, four attempts by the British government to implement a power-sharing agreement between Unionists and Nationalists failed because some mainstream political particles within Northern Ireland were recalcitrant. Tensions de-escalated in April 1998 when the Norwegian government aided the UK and Irish governments, along with some political parties within Northern Ireland, to reach a compromise that created the Belfast Agreement (commonly known as the Good Friday Agreement). This Agreement culminated in a new power-sharing government between the Unionists and the Nationalists and eventually facilitated disarmament. Conflict resumed in late March and early April 2021 in parts of Northern Ireland amid growing concerns by Unionists about their marginalization

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in the UK and their new union with Ireland in the post-Brexit trading agreement. Moreover, punctuated peace theory underscores the fault lines in postconflict societies that lead to the resumption of conflict. These fault lines develop from the structural issues that are often taken for granted as conflict parties undertake to negotiate a compromise. Punctuated peace theory, therefore, offers an empirically grounded explanation for the failure of peace processes in Sri Lanka, Columbia, and Northern Ireland. The evidence presented in this book in relation to peacebuilding processes in Sri Lanka, Columbia, and Northern Ireland, gives some degree of verisimilitude to punctuated peace theory that is empirically consistent with conflict transformation thinking and Brewer’s (2018) conceptualization of “compromise after conflict.”

Conclusion Armed insurgency has for many years portrayed Nigeria’s oil region as a dangerous and insecure place to live or do business. Activities such as kidnapping, hostage taking, robbery, sexual violence, and bombing of oil infrastructure have not only threatened the security of individuals and entire communities, but they also have had a substantial impact on the petroleum industry that supports Nigeria’s economy. It is important to note that the implementation of post-conflict peacebuilding has managed to suspend the violence in the oil region by disarming the insurgents and giving them an opportunity to denounce insurgency and criminality; thus a key part of peacebuilding is the government’s efforts to rehabilitate and reintegrate them into civilian society. As noted in Chapter 3, the relative stability in the oil region is a measure of the effectiveness of demobilization processes designed to de-program the minds of the insurgents against violent behavior. Despite this effort, the suffering in the coastal communities portrays how the consequences of inequality are manifest in the lived realities of marginalized populations. The inability to address these challenges as sustainably as possibly often revives insurgency at frequent intervals that punctuate the progression of peace. Research by Muggah (2007) showed

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that the end of armed conflict is not a guarantee of security and stability in post-conflict societies; ceasefire, peace agreements, and other forms of interventions also do not guarantee the security and safety of civilians and ex-combatants. By studying the dynamics of conflict escalation and de-escalation in the oil region, this book traces the nature of peace to punctuated peace. The development of punctuated peace as a novel theoretical concept represents some empirical consistency in conflict transformation thinking. My argument is that progress toward positive peace has been a daunting challenge in the oil region due to punctuations in the peace process caused by the dynamics of exclusion, the role of conflict entrepreneurs, corruption, and problems with peacebuilding design. Punctuated peace theory builds on the assumption that the management of the Niger Delta conflict has both peace-affirming and peacethreatening aspects that bring to light the positive and negative consequences of peacebuilding. Peace-affirming aspects are those interventions that not only demilitarize the oil region by taking arms from insurgents, but they also focused on the personal and social transformation of former insurgents. Likewise, peace-threatening aspects are interventions that incentivize insurgents to be peaceful, making violence an attractive means of making money in order to obtain monetary rewards. The peacebuilding program negates the attitudes of ex-insurgents who feel that the benefits of peacebuilding are awarded disproportionately in a manner that empowers some individuals while excluding others. Perceptions of exclusion combine with deep-seated feelings of hopelessness to magnify the inequities in the peacebuilding process and consequently result in negative attitudes that lead to destructive behaviors. The fact remains that peace cannot be sustained in a post-conflict society where thousands of disarmed insurgents feel alienated from the peacebuilding process. As time passes, the need for economic participation could revive negative attitudes that may lead to a relapse into insurgency—a state of punctuated peace. Punctuated peace thus provides the conceptual toolkit for theorizing the nature of peace in post-conflict societies that frequently relapse into violence due to systemic failures in the peace processes. The next chapter will provide pathways to positive peacebuilding in the oil region.

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9 Pathways to Positive Peacebuilding

This concluding chapter presents the pathways to positive peacebuilding in Nigeria’s oil region. As was demonstrated in the previous chapters, the peacebuilding program has been successful in halting insurgency and stabilizing the fragile post-conflict oil region by taking arms from insurgents, paying them monthly allowances, and building their capacity to reintegrate into society through a range of technical interventions including education, skill training, and entrepreneurship. While these interventions are praiseworthy, they have transformed the political realities of peacebuilding into an economic enterprise that makes recourse to violence a lucrative endeavor. This book argues that the failure of the peacebuilders to address the structural tensions at the heart of insurgency, along with competition for access to the material benefits of peacebuilding, created an impasse in the peace process that left the postconflict oil region in a state of punctuated peace whereby armed groups mobilize insurgency, at repeated intervals, to get the state to commit to negotiating with them.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 O. Okoi, Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2_9

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The challenging context of post-conflict peacebuilding highlights the many conceptual factors covered in this book that shape our understanding of punctuated peace: the impact of political entrepreneurs, the rise of a peace economy and the exclusion of insurgents from the material benefits of peacebuilding, the role of corruption in the peace process, and the failure of peacebuilding design. These macrosocial and microsocial forces indicate that the dynamics shaping the collapse of the peace process at repeated intervals are multi-faceted, as are the likely drivers of future insurgency. In pointing out these conclusions, this chapter contrasts the practices of peacebuilding with the actual perception of these practices. As argued throughout the book, the dominant peacebuilding framework in the oil region reinforces dynamics such as exclusion, mistrust, and insecurity that punctuate the progression of positive peace. These dynamics inform the analysis of punctuated peace that is central to this book as well as the pathways to positive peacebuilding. The data also provided a rich context through which to interpret the findings of this study with regards to the success and failure of DDR, allowing us to analyze the implications of the peacebuilding process. The implications of this study and how it contributes significant new knowledge to the discipline of peace and conflict studies are two-fold. First, the research results have an academic orientation that contributes to the ongoing discussion on peace and conflict studies. Second, the research has implications for the policy-making community in Nigeria and the international community of peacebuilding scholars and practitioners.

Scholarly Implications Armed insurgency in the oil region often involves the mobilization of violence to address social grievances. The causes of these grievances include (but are not limited to) exclusion, lack of opportunity to satisfy basic needs, systematic inequality, and other disadvantages (Abbas et al. 2019, 12). Cederman, Gleditsch, and Buhaug (2013) identified the three political factors that must be present to turn latent inequalities into social grievances: a perception of clearly distinguishable groups within

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society; a comparison of the perceived characteristics between groups; and perceived exclusion arising from unjust treatment by one group against another. According to Demmer and Ropers (2019, 22), violent behavior is driven by injustices that arise when people perceive a discrepancy between their “entitlements and benefits” and the need to address the perceived discrepancy. This book has shown that the progression of peace in the oil region is punctuated by incompatibilities that arise in the peacebuilding process when ex-insurgents perceive disparities between their entitlements and their benefits and decide to mobilize violence to address these injustices. In many ways, the peacebuilding program has been successful in transforming negative attitudes among ex-insurgents—which easily manifest into direct violence—while simultaneously promoting a new consciousness of nonviolence. As can be seen in the previous chapters, post-conflict peacebuilding has undoubtedly brought stability to the oil region. The fact that those insurgents for whom the DDR program was established are no longer attacking oil pipelines, kidnapping migrant workers, robbing people, and raping women and girls in the local communities is generally interpreted to mean that violence has ended. But violence, as we understand it, goes far beyond the experience of direct physical assault. It includes “avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs or…the impairment of human life, which lowers the actual degree to which someone is able to meet their needs below that which would otherwise be possible” (Galtung 1993, 106). This implies that the victims of violence are not necessarily those who suffer bodily injuries due to war, conflict, or physical assault, but also those who for reasons beyond their control, are prevented from satisfying their fundamental needs. There are growing concerns that the peacebuilding program failed to address the problem of exclusion, or that it focused, to a great extent, on rewarding former insurgent leaders (Oyewo 2016). The resurgence of violence in 2016 revived theoretical interest in the effectiveness of DDR as an instrument for achieving positive peace, including whether and to what extent it might have been successful in weakening the capacity of the insurgent groups. The fact that local insurgents are not fighting in the creeks is an indication that the peacebuilding program has been

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successful in bringing an end to violence, though this effort has so far been less successful in winning peace in the oil region (Aghedo 2012). Although the peacebuilding program was successful in reintegrating the ex-insurgents into civilian society through a range of programs, it nonetheless ignored the inequalities in the rural communities where illiteracy, deprivation, and environmental degradation defines the context of violence. While attacks on oil pipelines and kidnapping activities have ended (at least temporarily) and the region has begun to experience some semblance of stability, local populations are still deprived of their fundamental need for security and freedom. As the previous chapters have shown, the nature of peace in the oil region is defined by repeated interruptions in the peace process as armed groups mobilize violence as a strategy to get the state to commit to some negotiation. But until this research, no empirical study has theorized the nature of peace in the oil region in relation to the repeated interruptions in the peace process. Another critical challenge that this book raises is the disproportionate impact of the DDR program on women and girls. Of the 30,000 registered participants in the DDR program, only 822 were women, representing only 2.74% of the total number of participants. The aviation training programs, for example, had very few women graduating as pilots. While this observation was worrisome, I realized the problem is rooted in the patriarchal culture driving the peacebuilding process. The general impression among the peacebuilders was that women did not engage in combat in the creeks but were conscripted into the insurgency as sex workers, cooks, and intelligence agents to the male insurgents. This patriarchal approach to peacebuilding perpetuates inequalities because it suggests that the peacebuilders may have deliberately excluded women in opportunities designed to empower the ex-insurgents. One challenge that this book raises is how to translate peace research into practical models that can give voice to local constituencies, reduce the risk of violence, and enhance human dignity and the fulfillment of human potential in the oil region. Clearly, this challenge is germane to the growing interest in the peace and conflict studies field in exploring innovative approaches for dealing with intractable conflict. By grounding this work in extensive field research and applying an analytical framework that captures the variations in the experiences of ex-insurgents who

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participated in a variety of peacebuilding processes, I believe this study opens up new understandings of conflict transformation. According to Fischer and Ropers (2014, 13), conflict transformation is understood in the light of both the conflict structure and the process of moving the conflict toward “just peace.”

An Agenda for the Policy-Making Community The fundamental question confronting policymakers is no longer whether Nigeria is trapped by the resource curse syndrome or not, but rather what to do about it (Idemudia 2012). As this research is clearly linked to analytical insights in the various chapters, the policy implications need to be laid out as a way forward. Four policy spheres that provide pathways to positive peacebuilding are worth highlighting.

Restructuring the Peacebuilding Architecture Restructuring involves a re-organization of the peacebuilding structure to achieve efficiency and equity in the implementation of strategies designed to transform the structural causes of insurgency and move the post-conflict society toward positive peace. This can be achieved in four ways. 1. Decentralize Peacebuilding Operations Peacebuilding operations need to be decentralized away from the city to the oil region. This can be achieved by establishing regional administrative offices in each state within the Niger Delta to ensure accountability in the implementation of peacebuilding processes. This proposal is necessary because the current peacebuilding structure does not create room for accountability since decisions about who to reintegrate are made by the peacebuilders who mostly operate from the metropolitan center and are distant from the everyday realities in the local communities where most ex-insurgents live. Moreover, decentralization would transform the vertical relationship that currently

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exists between the peacebuilders and ex-insurgents by providing timesensitive responses to the concerns of ex-insurgents in the local communities who mostly face difficulties communicating with the peacebuilders in the city. My field experience in the local communities revealed that the peacebuilders rarely conduct follow-up visits to the ex-insurgents they have empowered with small businesses to evaluate their progress or investigate the challenges they might be facing in managing their enterprises. A critical challenge confronting the peacebuilding program was the lack of monitoring and evaluation as well as the limited communication channels between the peacebuilders and the ex-insurgents. The communications barriers made it difficult for exinsurgents to register their complaints regarding the performance of peacebuilding vendors or clarify issues that needed urgent attention. While mechanisms for complaints have been built into the peacebuilding process, they remain ineffective. In most cases, complaints from the ex-insurgents and amnesty students do not receive immediate attention at OSAPND. In some instances, ex-insurgents undertaking vocational training or studies overseas have expressed their grievances over lack of payment on OSAPND’s social media accounts instead of directing their concerns through internal dispute resolution channels. Decentralization would ensure that administrative and logistical issues that arise during program implementation are resolved locally and in a timely manner by competent peacebuilders located near the ex-insurgents. One advantage of this proposal is that it will ensure effective monitoring of peacebuilding activities, the verification of conflicting claims regarding empowerment and disempowerment, and break barriers to positive peace. 2. Remove Bureaucratic Impediments to Peacebuilding OSAPND faces enormous challenges in program delivery because of the bureaucratic decision-making structure, particularly the time required for the National Assembly to approve its budget before implementation. While in the field in February 2018, both the exinsurgents and amnesty students could not receive their monthly

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allowances because OSAPND had to wait for the National Assembly to defend the national budget before mobilizing its vendors. The peacebuilders believe the solution to this problem is to separate the peacebuilding program from the federal government’s bureaucratic structure. This will eliminate the budgetary constraints of implementing peacebuilding strictly as a program whose planning and implementation must align with the fiscal year as opposed to operating as a project within an independent budgetary window. The National Assembly can eliminate this bureaucratic structure by approving a grant for OSAPND to administer its peacebuilding programs based on stringent accountability measures. 3. Develop a Transparent DDR Exit Strategy The lack of an exit strategy has been identified as a fundamental challenge confronting Nigeria’s DDR program. It is important, therefore, that OSAPND work collaboratively with the ex-insurgents to develop a transparent exit strategy for the DDR program. This strategy would enable the current cohort of ex-insurgents to exit the DDR system at the reintegration stage rather than remain in the system indefinitely, still benefiting from the monthly allowance after being presumably reintegrated into civilian society. This proposal will save the federal government millions of naira in peacebuilding costs by ensuring that ex-insurgents who have been successfully reintegrated into civilian society through graduation from academic and vocational training programs, and those who have been empowered with small businesses yet are receiving monthly payments indefinitely, are exited from the DDR system. This proposal will also reduce the number of participants in the peacebuilding program from the current 30,000 to the barest minimum. The federal government can then reinvest their monthly allowance, training, and empowerment costs in job creation to benefit other youth in the oil region. 4. Strengthen Monitoring and Evaluation Systems Monitoring and evaluation will reveal the success and deficiencies in program implementation and enhance the capacity of OSAPND to improve its performance. Where there are inefficiencies in service delivery, the monitoring and evaluation team should be able to identify these gaps and recommend appropriate measures. Corrupt

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vendors can then be identified and replaced with vendors who will uphold the integrity of the peace process. Monitoring and evaluation will also help the government to measure the impact of peacebuilding interventions beyond the cessation of hostilities in the oil region and recommend areas where the peacebuilding program needs significant reform. 5. Pay Ex-insurgents Directly Another proposal for restructuring the peacebuilding architecture is to ensure that payments accruing to ex-insurgents are made directly to them rather than using their leaders to facilitate these payments. This proposal will eliminate the middleman in the peace process, ensuring that conflict arising from the marginalization of ex-insurgents who receive less of what the government has agreed to pay them is resolved. Dealing directly with the ex-insurgents rather than through their leaders has potential to weaken their leadership structure while simultaneously breaking the dependency ties that bind the ex-insurgents to their former leaders who continue to wield enormous influence in the oil region.

Promoting Peacebuilding Through Social Development The severity of unemployment in the oil region underscores the importance of job creation in promoting positive peacebuilding. Rewarding the ex-insurgents with a monthly stipend of N60,000, which is twice the federal minimum wage of N30,000, without engaging them in economically productive activities is a waste of resources. It is also inhumane treatment when viewed as a set-up for failure, and arguably, a potential cause of future instability. The federal government cannot continue to encourage a culture of dependency by investing the bulk of the peacebuilding budget in the payment of monthly allowances to ex-insurgents, particularly those who have been reintegrated in principle but have yet to exit the system. Promoting positive peacebuilding through social development can be achieved in five ways.

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1. Transform Ex-insurgents into an Active Labour Force A potential solution to insurgency in Nigeria’s oil region is to transform the ex-insurgents into an active labor force earning legitimate wages for their contribution to nation-building instead of receiving free monthly payments without working. This solution would require the federal government to establish a Regional Coast Guard for securing inland waterways across the oil region. The ex-insurgents can then be recruited and trained as Coast Guards to ensure there is justification for paying them monthly salaries. The Coast Guards will complement the Naval Force and will be a useful resource for fighting criminal activities such as kidnapping and oil theft in the Niger Delta creeks. The Navy will continue to guard Nigeria’s territorial waters as is done in North America where Coast Guards operate independent of the Naval Force. Implementing this proposal would require technical training and the procurement of vessels for Regional Coast Guard operations. While political will is needed for the federal government to commit the funding required to implement this proposal, the benefits to regional and community security as well as crime prevention along the inland waterways cannot be underestimated. This strategy will also create employment opportunities for those ex-insurgents who have received marine training overseas but are unemployed. 2. Harness the Potential of the Coastal Communities Through Commercial Fishing Governments at the federal and subnational levels must consider the importance of harnessing the economic potential of the coastal communities through investment in commercial fishing. This proposal would require the procurement of trawlers for commercial production of fish and will create employment opportunities for youth in the coastal communities who already have experience in fishing and knowledge of the coastal ecosystem but lack the resources and technology to scale-up their production capacity. This proposal has enormous advantages given that Nigeria imports fish worth billions of naira, and it could also provide a diversification scheme away from the dependence on oil. For example, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) ranks Nigeria among the top net

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importers of fishery products, with an import value of US$1.2 billion in 2013 and an export value of US$284,390 million (FAO 2017). A BBC Africa Report showed that in 2014, Nigeria received about 9,000 tons of stockfish imports from Norway (Dale and Uwonkunda 2017). Recognizing the vast potential of the oil region in terms of coastal and marine resources, the government can use commercial fishing to diversify the national economy, create employment opportunity for disadvantaged youth, and reduce poverty. Norway, for example, built its wealth on fisheries before the discovery of oil, and fish exports to date constitute its second-largest export revenue earner, with stockfish exports to Nigeria contributing a significant element of its economy. Therefore, interventions that focus on promoting sustainable solutions capable of driving local economic development by transforming the resources in the coastal communities into new industrial clusters have the potential to boost employment in the youth sector, break Nigeria’s dependency on oil exports, and contribute to positive peace in the oil region. 3. Unlock the Tourism Potential of the Oil Region Tourism is a neglected sector in the oil region even though geopolitical and geo-economic conditions remain favorable for a thriving tourism economy with the potential to contribute to massive employment. Both federal and subnational governments should invest in the building of infrastructure for tourism development in the oil region as a means of integrating unemployed youth into the tourism economy. This proposal would entail the creation of a regional Marshall Plan to unlock the tourism potential of the oil region and promote economic diversification. While this proposal does not undermine the significant role that oil plays in Nigeria’s economy, it suggests that compared to tourism, the dependence on oil generates negative externalities while the multinationals have no incentive to discontinue gas flaring, which is damaging to the environment. A tourism industry may force oil companies to stop such destructive behavior. Also, job creation through tourism can provide a sustainable pathway to positive peacebuilding in the oil region.

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4. Promote Innovation-Driven Enterprise Development Initiatives Another proposal for conflict transformation in the oil region through social development would be to promote innovation-driven, youthoriented, enterprise development initiatives to harness the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of marginalized youth in rural communities. Implementing this proposal would entail creating a Regional Innovation Fund (RIF) to provide start-up capital for creative and innovative youth who are willing and able to develop new and appropriate technologies for tackling the development challenges in their communities. This proposal is significant because the beneficiaries will not only be contributing to the solution, but they also will be invested in their local communities. 5. Fight Illiteracy in the Rural Communities The lack of educational opportunities and the level of illiteracy in rural communities make it difficult for many youths to experience significant transformation in their lives. Tackling illiteracy in the rural communities would promote the realization of individual potential, particularly for those community youth who can barely read and write and are at greater risk of being deprived of job opportunities. Peacebuilding programming should accord primacy to interventions that focus on addressing the prevalence of illiteracy in rural communities throughout the oil region. 6. Promote Peace Education Peace Education is “the promotion of skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values needed to inspire behavior change that will enable individuals to prevent the occurrence of conflict and violence; to resolve conflict peacefully; and to create the conditions for peace” (UNICEF, as cited in Fountain 1999, 1). At the core of this definition is the importance attached to creative activities that promote the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that facilitate conflict prevention and the peaceful resolution of conflict or create the conditions for sustainable peace. For Galtung (2008), peace education is the pedagogical effort of creating a world at peace by moving beyond the mere absence of violence. The central tenet of peace education is the transformation of not just the student but the expert trainers, which could lead to the transformation of the entire society. Turay and English (2008) assume that because our

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current social and economic order is rife with physical and structural violence, the transformation of society and the social and economic order is integral to peace. Creating a culture of peace in the oil region thus requires a fundamental change in knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and worldview. This would enable the learners to act as peace ambassadors working toward creating a more peaceful society. Because peace education hopes to instill in the human consciousness a commitment to a culture of peace, it plays a fundamental role in the creative processes of societal transformation across the Niger Delta. As Mezirow (1997) noted, transformative learning occurs when people change how they see and interpret the world by critically reflecting on their belief systems and taking conscious steps to bring about new ways of interpreting their worlds. Progress toward positive peacebuilding in the oil region would require the promotion of the core values of peace education. These values are anchored on a culture of nonviolence and the principles of social justice. The culture of nonviolence underscores the level of freedom, trust, and respect for human dignity, while social justice principles call attention to values such as equality, responsibility, and solidarity. For peacebuilding initiatives in the oil region to remain sustainable, the peacebuilders must incorporate peace education initiatives designed to transform negative attitudes and behaviors into their interventions while encouraging peaceful processes of engaging with the state and oil multinationals. 7. Increase Opportunities for Women Durable peace is achievable where post-conflict peacebuilding processes include efforts to understand peace through the perspective of female ex-insurgents. Engaging female ex-insurgents will uncover the dynamics in the peace process, ensuring equal participation of women in decisions concerning the design and implementation of specific strategies for reintegrating them into civilian society socially and economically. Post-conflict peacebuilding processes must include a dedicated effort to enhance the capacity of female ex-insurgents

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through the range of educational and technical training opportunities designed by the peacebuilders to facilitate the social, economic, and cultural reintegration of ex-insurgents.

Supporting Effective Public Health Interventions in the Oil Region The factors that influence health and ill health, or the determinants of health and ill-health, are prevalent across Nigeria’s oil region. They cut across poverty, education, housing conditions, and environmental degradation in both rural and urban communities across the oil region. The human condition in the oil region suggests that intervention in public health has become a fundamental requirement for positive peacebuilding. In line with corporate citizenship norms, there are rising expectations that oil multinationals operating in the oil region should take responsible actions to ensure higher standards of living and quality of life for their host communities while still maintaining profitability for their stakeholders. Specifically, oil multinationals must undertake socially responsible public health actions that empower communities. This includes supporting the development of public health systems to address the social determinants of health, and funding innovative research and training programs to strengthen the practice of public health across rural communities in the oil region. Such interventions should include programs to prevent diseases originating from the effects of oil extraction on environmental and health systems, while promoting public health information management to support decision-making across local communities identified as vulnerable to oil pollution.

Conclusion This book has shown that different conceptions of peace have remarkably different implications when devising strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding. Understanding the sociopolitical context within which

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insurgent groups in Nigeria’s oil region arise, and the transformations emerging from the implementation of post-conflict peacebuilding interventions, is critical to the stability of the oil region. Such an understanding can create the pathways to positive peacebuilding. However, positive peacebuilding should not be merely another concept to be mainstreamed by the peacebuilding policy community, but rather a practical effort to transform destructive behaviors in the oil region beyond the cessation of insurgency while also expanding opportunities to marginalized populations. Moreover, the policy community should not just articulate peacebuilding as a goal but ensure that peacebuilding frameworks are emancipatory and transformative and adapt to the needs and aspirations of local populations in the oil region. It is important that peace researchers also pay greater attention to the context of post-conflict peacebuilding. This will ensure that the voices of ex-insurgents are taken into consideration when designing inquiries that seek to measure the success and failure of post-conflict, peacebuilding processes. Failure to do so may lead to research that reproduces the cycle of marginalization within the discipline of peace studies. The pathways to positive peacebuilding presented in this chapter are immensely significant as they point out the challenges in the oil region that demand realistic policy responses to prevent future insurgencies. Given the complexity of Nigeria’s oil insurgency and the cost of implementing peacebuilding, designing measurable objectives informed by an analysis that emphasizes the structural causes of violence and the reasons the peace process is punctuated at repeated intervals will contribute to the knowledgebase for implementing realistic pathways to positive peacebuilding. Such an endeavor demands an unfailing determination from state, corporate, and community stakeholders; the mobilization of peacebuilding resources for the benefit of the insurgents rather than the peacebuilders; and a better understanding of the underlying needs of the local insurgents for whom the peacebuilding program was designed to transform.

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References Abbas, Sara, Matteo Dressler, and Nicole Rieber. 2019. Addressing Social Grievances. In Berghof Handbook of Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding: 20 Essays on Theory and Practice, ed. Berghof Foundation, 12–19. Berlin, Germany: Berghof Foundation. Aghedo, Iro. 2012. Winning the War, Losing the Peace: Amnesty and the Challenges of Post-conflict Peace-building in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Journal of Asian and African Studies 48 (3): 267–80. https://doi.org/10.1177/002190 9612453987. Cederman, Lars-Erik, Gleditsch, Kristian S. Gleditsch, and Halvard Buhaug. 2013. Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Dale, Penny, and Victoria Uwonkunda. 2017. Nigeria’s Love Affair with a Norwegian Fish. BBC Africa. Accessed November 12, 2020. https://www. bbc.com/news/world-africa-42137476. Demmer, Julian, and Norbert Ropers. 2019. Averting Humiliation: Dignity, Justice, Trust. In Berghof Handbook of Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding: 20 Essays on Theory and Practice, ed. Berghof Foundation, 20–26. Berlin, Germany: Berghof Foundation. Fisher, Martina, and Norbert Ropers. 2004. Introduction. In Transforming Ethnopolitical Conflict: The Berghof Handbook, ed. Alex Austin, Fischer Martina, and Norbert Ropers, 11–22. Berlin, Germany: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Food and Agriculture Organization. 2017. Fishery and Aquaculture Country Profiles: The Federal Republic of Nigeria. Accessed November 12, 2020. http://www.fao.org/fishery/facp/NGA/en. Fountain, Susan. 1999. Peace Education in UNICEF. UNICEF Staff Working Papers. PD-ED-99/003. Accessed September 15, 2020. https://www.unicef. org/lifeskills/files/PeaceEducationUNICEF.pdf. Galtung, Johan. 1993. Kulturelle Gewalt. Der Burger im Staat 43 (2): 106–12. ———. 2008. Form and Content of Peace Education. Encyclopaedia of Peace Education. Teacher’s College, Columbia University. Accessed October 12, 2018. http://www.tc.edu/centers/epe/PDF%20articles/Galtung_ch6_ 22feb08.pdf. Idemudia, Uwafiokun. 2012. The Resource Curse and the Decentralization of Oil Revenue: The Case of Nigeria. Journal of Cleaner Production 35: 183–93.

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Mezirow, Jack. 1997. Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. In Tranformative Learning in Action: Insights from Practice, ed. Patricia Cranton, 41–50. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Oyewo, Hussain T. 2016. Nigeria: The Challenges of Reintegrating Niger Delta Militants. Conflict Studies Quarterly 17: 57–72. March 12, 2018. http:// www.csq.ro/wp-content/uploads/Hussain-Taofik-OYEWO.pdf. Turay, Thomas Mark, and Leona M. English. 2008. Toward a Global Culture of Peace: A Transformative Model of Peace Education. Journal of Transformative Education 6 (4): 286–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541344608330602.

Index

A

C

Agbiboa, Daniel 99, 105, 106 Agency 56–58, 68–70, 72, 74 Ajibola, Iyabobola 58, 66, 69 Alienation 12, 89–93, 139 Amnesty 1, 2, 4, 9, 11, 20–29, 99, 101, 104, 105, 108, 109, 133, 134, 137, 138, 144, 147, 149 Amnesty peace 5 Asuni, Judith 26, 119 Augsburger, David 34, 49

Compromise 136, 153–155 Conflict entrepreneurs 138, 142, 143, 156 Conflict escalation 79–82, 86–88, 91–93 Conflict transformation 34, 35, 40, 49–51, 135–137, 139, 149, 155, 156 Corruption 4, 5, 8, 12, 85, 86, 92, 99, 100, 106, 107, 109, 138, 143–145, 156 Cultural. See Cultural change Cultural change 34, 47

B

Bourdieu, Pierre 48 Burton, John 43 Byrne, Sean 154

D

Davidheiser, Mark 99, 106 Decentralization 167, 168 Demobilization 100, 109

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 O. Okoi, Punctuated Peace in Nigeria’s Oil Region, Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86327-2

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180

Index

Devaluation-Alienation 89, 90, 140 Development 5, 6, 12, 118, 121–123, 126–128 Disarmament 125, 128 Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) 1, 2, 4–8, 10, 11, 20, 23–26, 28, 29, 33, 35–40, 43, 44, 49, 51, 52, 56, 59, 82–84, 108, 125–127, 133, 134, 138, 142, 146, 150, 151, 153, 154, 164–166, 169 Disbanded 154 Disempowerment 56, 65, 70, 72–74 Donais, Timothy 67 Dynamics 135, 138, 144, 145, 147, 152, 156

E

Ecological empowerment 57, 66, 68 Economic Expediency 5 Employment 81, 90 Employment discrimination 89 Empowered 2, 3, 55, 59–61, 69 Empowerment 2, 6, 8, 9, 12, 55–61, 63, 64, 66–73, 107, 108, 110 Entrepreneurship 7, 9, 10, 28, 58–60, 70, 73, 107, 109 Environmental justice 5 Exclusion 4, 6, 8, 12, 80, 82, 90, 92, 138, 139, 141, 145, 149, 150, 152, 156, 164, 165 Ex-insurgents 1–12, 33–35, 37–52, 55–74, 81, 83, 85, 88–93, 99–112, 165–171, 174–176 ExxonMobil 37, 38

F

Freedom 5, 6, 12, 57, 118–121, 127 Freire, Paulo 72 G

Galtung, Johan 6, 92, 119, 124, 134, 136, 146, 149, 165, 173 Ginty, Roger Mac 58 H

Human capacity development 58 I

Idemudia, Uwafiokun 79, 80, 121 Ikelegbe, Augustine 24, 26, 33, 39, 62, 79, 80, 83, 121, 122 Insecurity 1, 8 Instability 6, 8 Insurgency 1, 3–12, 19, 20, 23–26, 29, 33–40, 44, 46, 79–89, 92, 93, 99–106, 108, 112, 118, 119, 122–124, 128, 133, 137–139, 141–143, 145–148, 152, 155, 156, 163, 164, 166, 167, 171, 176 Interpersonal. See Interpersonal change Interpersonal change 34–36 Intrapersonal. See Intrapersonal change Intrapersonal change 34, 38–42 K

Knight, Andy 39, 69

Index

L

Lederach, John Paul 41, 47, 50, 67, 68, 71, 72, 137, 146 Liberal peacebuilding 151–153 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan (LTTE) 153

181

Oil multinationals 5, 35–38, 40, 41, 50, 81, 89, 90 Okonofua, Benjamin 63, 99, 106 Operation red economy 85, 86 Oriola, Temitope 64 Oriola, Tope 119, 120 Osaghae, Egosa 79

M

Mallinder, Louise 20–22 Marginalization 3, 12, 149, 153, 154 McEvoy, Kieran 20–22 Monetization of peacebuilding 99–101 Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) 3, 19, 26

N

Negative peace 134, 137, 138, 149 Nepotism 4, 8 Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) 4, 85–88, 91, 93, 103 Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) 10, 84 Nonviolence 5, 12, 118, 123, 124, 127, 128 Nyiayaana, Kialee 99, 106

O

Obi, Cyril 79, 105, 106 Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta (OSAPND) 9–12, 26, 28, 45–47, 49, 59–63, 65, 91, 107, 108, 111, 168, 169

P

Paramilitary 154 Peace 1–8, 10–13, 118–128, 133–135, 137–143, 146–150, 153–156 Peace-affirming 139, 156 Peacebuilders 2, 3, 5–9, 39, 40, 42, 49, 163, 166–169, 174–176 Peacebuilding 79, 80, 82–86, 88–93, 117, 118, 122–128, 133–135, 138–147, 149–153, 155, 156, 163–170, 173–176 Peace economy 93, 100, 102–104, 106, 111, 112, 164 Peace education 173, 174 Peace-threatening 139, 156 Political entrepreneurs 164 Political retribution 85, 87, 103, 143 Positive peace 134, 137, 138, 148, 149, 156 Positive peacebuilding 13, 163, 164, 167, 170, 172, 174–176 Post-conflict peacebuilding 3–8, 11, 12, 19–21, 25, 27, 29, 33, 34, 36, 38, 41, 43, 44, 46–48, 50–52 Post-conflict society 134, 135, 137, 139–142, 146, 148, 156 Post-conflict stabilization 6

182

Index

Presidential Amnesty Program (PAP) 2, 9, 27, 61 Presidential Amnesty Scholarship 10, 28, 47, 49, 107, 111 Punctuated peace 8, 13, 134, 137–142, 144–150, 152, 156, 163, 164 Punctuated peace theory 134, 138, 139, 141, 143, 149, 153–156 R

Re-escalation 87 Reintegration 126, 127 Remilitarization 86, 87, 89 Restructuring 167, 170 Revival 82, 83, 86, 89 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 142, 153, 154

Structural change 34 Structural problems 154 Sustainable peace 2, 5, 6, 8

T

Technocratic empowerment 58, 69, 73 Third phase militants 83 Transformation 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12 Transformative peacebuilding 34, 36, 44, 50–52 Transitional justice 19–23, 29

U

Umukoro, Nathaniel 24, 26, 33, 39, 62, 83 Underdevelopment 121–123 Ushie, Vanessa 99, 101, 103, 106

S

Scholarship. See Presidential Amnesty Scholarship Security 1, 4, 6–8, 11, 12 Stability 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 118, 122, 125–128, 134, 143, 145–147, 153, 155, 156 Structural 1, 4–8, 11

V

Väyrynen, Raimo 50 Vendors 104, 107, 108, 110, 111

W

Watts, Michael 3, 4, 79