-Ex-militants shine at home and abroad, but the programme is
ripe to become an equal opportunity initiative
The Presidential Amnesty
Programme has done the nation proud on several fronts. According to Brig. Gen. Paul
Boroh (rtd), Special Adviser to the President on Amnesty Programme, out of the
59 ex-militants that just graduated from Benson Idahosa University, 12 obtained
First-class Honours degrees while 20 of the graduates had Second-class upper
division in disciplines ranging from Sociology to Environmental Science and
Information Communication Technology. Four of the graduates came out as best
students in their various disciplines.
In addition, 45 students completed their degrees at Belarusian
State University of Informatics and Radio-electronics with three of them
obtaining First-class honours. Expressing satisfaction about the performance of
amnesty beneficiaries in the two universities, Brig. General Boroh (rtd) added:
“This graduation fitted perfectly into
the Amnesty Exit Strategic Plan.”
We congratulate the graduates for doing Nigeria proud at home
and abroad. In a country where complaints about quality of education is rife,
it is salutary that ex-militants who turned in their guns only a few years ago
to accept scholarships to enroll in universities at home and overseas have
worked hard to make the country feel justified for disarming and demobilizing
young people who would have entered adulthood as terrorists. The ex-militants
have illustrated the power of the Federal Government’s programme of
rehabilitation and re-orientation, which the Amnesty Programme initiated by
late President Umaru Yar’Adua was designed to deliver. In short, through their
enviable academic performance, the amnesty beneficiaries have demonstrated why
talents must not be allowed to go to waste for lack of caring and responsive
policies by policymakers. In addition, the programme has brought relative peace
to the Niger Delta despite the onset of recession.
The call of the presidential adviser on amnesty for an exit
strategic plan could not have come at a better time. It is appropriate for the
presidential adviser to remind the nation that amnesty was not designed to be a
permanent policy. It has achieved many of its objectives: dis-armament and de-mobilization
of combatants who once felt pressured to carry arms in a struggle for
empowerment of youths in a region that serves as the country’s goose that lays
the golden egg.
The programme has already made enviable progress in the last few
years. Just as the presidential adviser hinted, amnesty is an interventionist
policy that should not become a permanent feature of governance. An exit
strategy is overdue, if the programme is not to be seen as a facile effort to
avoid a more comprehensive policy of equal opportunity for all—combatants and
non-combatants— in the Niger Delta.
The problem of oil-producing communities deserves a greater
attention than amnesty payments for those likely to threaten peace in the
communities. Making amnesty benefits a permanent policy can make militancy look
heroic and profitable to youths who would rather prefer to live in a country
where economic justice or equitable distribution of revenue from
environmentally damaging fossil energy should be the preferred governance
ethic. Similarly, creation of two bureaucracies: Niger Delta Development
Commission (NDDC) and the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs can distract
residents of the region and even government officials from looking for a
cost-effective solution to the problem that threw up militancy in the first
instance. Since their inception, the two bureaucracies have not made much
impact for citizens to identify with, other than narratives and
counter-narratives of corruption and marginalisation of one section of the
Niger Delta by others in control of such agencies.
In view of the ongoing diversification resulting from sudden
drop in the price of oil, there is no better time for the Federal Government to
adopt a more structurally effective means of sharing resources, especially
between oil-producing and non-oil producing communities. Passing a higher percentage
of revenue from oil to states and communities in the Niger Delta is bound to
bring more benefits to the region and the country than sustaining a policy of
special amnesty benefits to militants and nurturing two bureaucracies that
symbolically address the problems of youth empowerment and regional development
in the region.
Nigeria needs to have regions that can thrive without special
interventions that seem to focus on silencing those who violently express
frustration about lack of equity.
Source:- The Nation
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