ASSESSMENT OF THE AMNESTY PROGRAMME AND PEACE BUILDING ACTIVITIES OF THE NIGER DELTA REGION
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This study examined the effects of the amnesty programme on peace building in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. Despite the implementation of the Amnesty program since 2009, issues of unemployment, insecurity, poverty environmental degradation still remain unaddressed. The study addressed the concept of peace building, conflicts and amnesty programme as well as the amnesty components including disarmament, demobilization and reintegration while Theory of the Post-Colonial State and Conflict Transformation Theory guided the study. The research design adopted was the survey design. The samples used for the study were 400 randomly selected respondents that cut across the Niger Delta Region. The study used primary data from questionnaire and the analyses was done using both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The descriptive tools used were tables and percentages while the descriptive tool was the ordinary least square regression analysis. The findings showed that Amnesty Programme and Nature of Amnesty Programme had positive but insignificant effects on peace building in the Niger Delta Region, while Challenges of Amnesty Programme had a negative and significant effect on Amnesty Programme, and mitigation of challenges has a positive and significant effect on peace building in Niger Delta Region. The study recommends among other things that the Federal Government of Nigeria in collaboration with the state governments in the Niger Delta Region should make intensified efforts to improve the implementation, monitoring and control of the disarmament, demobilization, reintegration phases of the amnesty programme in order to have better and statistically significant and positive results towards peace building.