Nigeria’s Policy Response to the Niger Delta and Boko Haram Crises and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Environment

By Prof Kehinde Olayode¹
Principal Investigator/Coordinator ARUA/UKRI Capacity Building Project in Post-Conflict Societies Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

& William Hermann ARREY, Ph.D
Senior Lecturer and Chair, Department of Peace and Development Studies, FSSIR, Protestant University of Central Africa, Senior Fellow in Peace and Security (Nkafu Policy Institute) Cameroun

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 ¹This policy brief is a product of the Lecture delivered at a Special Conference Organized by the Protestant University of Central Africa (PUCA) Djoungolo, Yaoundé, Cameroun on 23rd May, 2023 as part of the activities for the ARUA-UKRI sponsored staff exchange programme.  I duly acknowledge the sponsorship of ARUA-UKRI for the visit to Cameroun.   I equally recognise the warm reception received from the management, students and staff of the Protestant University of Central Africa in the course of the exchange programme. Specifically, I sincerely acknowledge the support and facilitation of Dr. William Hermann Arrey for the staff exchange programme and the publication of this policy brief.

Introduction

The transformation of conflict-torn societies into peaceful, stable and more prosperous ones is an immensely complex task, which is often susceptible to contradictory pressures and concomitant risks of a relapse into violence. Transition from war to peace itself involves multiple processes such as ‘conflict resolution, peace-building, peace-enforcement, demobilization, disarmament, resettlement, rehabilitation, reconciliation, reconstruction, institutional building, among others.  As Reychler and Langer (2006) note, “post-conflict” scenarios are often characterized by “multiple transition processes,” including the transition from war to peace, but also often accompanied by democratization, decentralization, and market liberalization.

Taking a process-oriented approach means that “post-conflict” environment should be seen as lying along a transition continuum (in which it sometimes moves forward and backwards), rather than placing it in more or less arbitrary boxes, of being “in conflict” or “at peace”. In this policy brief, a more productive approach to conceptualizing the post-conflict scenario is to see it not as a period bounded by a single specific event, but as a process that involves the achievement of a range of peace milestones.  A post-conflict environment is also characterized by weak societal structures and institutions, thereby highly susceptible to corruption.

As such, this policy brief provides a situation analysis of Nigeria’s policy response to the challenges of the Niger Delta and Boko Haram Crises post-conflict environment. It analyses some of the key policy interventions of the government and identifies the gaps/weaknesses in those interventions.

Agitations in the Niger-Delta Region and the Failure of Military Strategies

The conflict in the Niger Delta region is arguably one of the biggest threats to the nation ‘s existence. Age-long feelings of relative deprivation in the Niger Delta have led to frustration-aggression typified by violent conflicts. There is a myriad of reasons behind the protracted nature of conflicts and/or agitations in Nigeria ‘s Niger Delta region, but at its core is the struggle over resource ownership and control, as well as the sharing of rent-revenue concessions from multinational oil companies (Odoemene, 2011).Successive military and civilian governments in Nigeria have adopted military solution as a default conflict management strategy to address regional grievances such as the Niger Delta crisis and the Boko Haram insurgency. The state has often relied on its military might to suppress the demands of people in the midst of a lack of political will to tackle the fundamental issues raised. Thus, previous peace building initiatives in Nigeria, and across the continent have only succeeded in midwifing ‘negative peace ‘, instead of sustainable positive peace. The reason is often that Western ideologies of peace building fail to take into cognizance the citizen question and the need for inclusion and ownership of the peace building process by all stakeholders involved especially those directly affected by the conflict situation.  Predictably, shortly after Nigeria ‘s return to democracy in 1999, agelong agitations reemerged in the Niger-Delta region fueling violence, propagated by militant groups in the region. In an attempt to quell militancy in the region, the then government of President Olusegun Obasanjo adopted repression and militarization as a conflict management strategy, but that did not achieve the needed sustainable peace. Although militarization achieved ‘limited’ cessation of visibly armed violence, the roots of the underlining issues dug deeper (Adebayo and Matsilele, 2019) and were left intact as they rather needed a non-military solution.

Amnesty Policy and Peace-building in the Niger-Delta Region

Consequently, recognizing the fragility of the conflict management strategies adopted by former President Obasanjo, the government of late President Umaru Musa Yar‘adua and Vice President Goodluck Jonathan initiated an amnesty programme that encouraged militants in the region to renounce militancy, relinquish their arms and ammunition to the government, and consent to an initiative that involves skills acquisition, provision of stipends, and gradual reintegration‘ into the larger community (Ogege, 2011). The amnesty also sought to pacify the region after decades of infrastructural neglect and environmental degradation. The amnesty saw a reduction in disruptions of oil explorations, with an attendant increase in Nigeria‘s oil output. Although there was renewed militancy in the region in the years following President Yar‘adua‘s death, the general consensus was that the programme achieved relative successes (Adebayo and Matsilele, 2019).

It has been argued that the introduction of the amnesty programme by the Yar‘adua-led government represented a shift in ideology from repression to collaborative peace building (Adebayo and Matsilele, 2019). The idea was to shift away from the militarization approach adopted by previous administrations, to a more participatory tactic that would include key stakeholders in the Niger Delta, including militants into formal and informal structures of resource benefit. There are concerns, however, that the amnesty programme only succeeded in reducing visible violence. Dode (2015) is of the opinion that the framers of the amnesty policy did not take into consideration the need to make provisions for non-militant members of the region who are also important key stakeholders

Boko Haram and Operation Safe Corridors

When it seemed agitation in the Niger Delta region was gradually abating due to the amnesty initiative, the Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet ‘s Teachings and Jihad), popularly known as Boko Haram, emerged and quickly transformed from a stick-wielding and stone-throwing group of disgruntled young men (and women) to one of the most terrifying terrorist organizations in the world. The Institute for Economics and Peace, in its 2015 report, declared the group the fiercest and deadliest terrorist group in the world ‘, ahead of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Using the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) as a measurement tool, the report claims that the group‘s activities accounted  for 6, 600 deaths in 2014 alone (Ewi, 2015).

The Operation Safe Corridor is a rehabilitation programme aimed at assimilating surrendering Boko Haram fighters back into society. The main goal of the scheme is to help ex-combatants with post-war psychotherapy, while at the same time, offering them rudimentary vocational training skills, with the aim of providing them with a means of livelihood outside the Boko Haram trenches. According to Bukarti (2019) participants in the scheme are asked to choose from skills such as carpentry, tailoring, welding, poultry, shoemaking etc.   Although a negotiated deal and group-level amnesty remain elusive, a defectors programme for ―repentant low-risk Boko Haram combatants has operated since 2015 (Felbab-Brown, 2018). The programme targets Boko Haram insurgents within selected prisons across the country, and applies an individualized approach, identifying the risk-related needs of each prisoner, in order to implement interventions to reduce their risk of engaging or advocating violent extremism. The overarching de-radicalization initiatives in Nigeria have the intended goal of supporting the reintegration of former combatants into society through educational support, although it is recognized that full re-integration may be a longer-term objective and community needs would have to also be taken into account (Anyadike, 2016:5).

The operation safe corridor initiative for repentant ‘Boko Haram insurgents has been greeted with mix reactions from a study conducted among communities in the Northeast Nigeria (Adebayo and Matsilele, 2019).  One of the major concerns raised was the fear that reintegrated of former Boko Haram fighters would turn against the community after winning their trust.

Sustaining Peace in Nigeria’s Post-Conflict Environment

Despite a reduction in violent conflicts in the Niger Delta and most of Nigeria ‘s northeast region, the conflicts cannot be said to be over. Boko Haram insurgence still carry out guerrilla-like attacks against the military and vulnerable communities especially in Borno State, while the socio-political milieu in the Niger Delta is so fragile, and would flare up at the slightest provocation.

The concept of ‘sustaining peace’, as affirmed in the 2016 UN’s overarching conceptual framework for building peace, through identical resolutions issued by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly, focuses on sustaining peace “at all stages of conflict and in all its dimensions” and on the imperative to prevent “the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict”, in response to troubling trends such as the spike in violent conflict worldwide and unparalleled levels of forced displacement.  Reinforced by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which stresses the key role of local ownership in achieving sustainable development, and which aspires to ‘peaceful, just and inclusive societies’(SDG16), sustaining peace becomes ‘people-centered and inclusive in approach.  Sustainable peace is therefore conceptualized as both ‘a goal and a process to building a common vision of a society, ensuring that the needs of all segments of the population are taken into account’ in ‘activities aimed at preventing the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict, addressing root causes, assisting parties to conflict to end hostilities, ensuring national reconciliation, and moving towards recovery, reconstruction and development’.

Sustaining peace should be geared towards understanding blockages to peace and specifically focuses on: (i.) Understanding why effective, accountable and inclusive institutions have not been built in Nigeria’s post-conflict environment (ii.) Understanding the dynamics of blockages to peace construction with a primary focus on factors, actors, internal and external dynamics, including the reasons for not implementing peace deals (iii.) Examining factors that hinder peace at the local, national and regional levels. What   these obstacles are, where they come from and how they can be overcome?

Challenges of Nigeria’s Post-Conflict Environment

As previously stressed, a post-conflict context is a transitional period bounded by past war and future peace processes, a period which introduces a number of new challenges. The post-conflict environment in Nigeria is therefore characterized by the following challenges:

• general insecurity, internal displacement, necessitating the establishment of many camps for internally displaced persons;
• proliferation of small   arms and light weapons, arms trafficking;
• emergence of war lords and the challenges of demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration;
• banditry, kidnapping for ransom, vandalization, sabotage and bunkering;
• sexual and gender-based violence and corruption;
• unemployment, loss of income etc;
• pervasive Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV), forced marriage of girls and abduction of school girls as happened in Chibok (Borno state) and Dapchi (Yobe state)
• proliferation of donor service agencies and poor coordination resulting into duplication of activities; and
• human rights abuses, especially in the counter-insurgency operations

Policy Initiatives to the Challenges of Post-Conflict Environment in Nigeria

• In line with the framework of the UN Resolution 1325, the Federal Government of Nigeria adopted a National Action Plan (NAP) for the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, on Women, Peace and Security
• In addition, the Nigeria Police Gender Policy (NPGP) was developed in 2010 to provide broad guidelines for mainstreaming gender issues into the police structure and administration.
• By 2021, the Nigerian Army, the Ministry of Defence and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps have all domesticated the UN Resolution 1325 by mainstreaming gender into their administrative structures and operations.
• In 2015, the Federal Government enacted the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Bill (VAPP Law). The bill was a response to the pervasive sexual and gender-based violence, especially against women in post-conflict environment. By 2022, 33 states including the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja) have domesticated the law.
• Implementation of the ‘Operation Safe School’ project to enhance security and enrolment in schools, especially in conflict-prone areas of the Northeast Nigeria

Policy Gaps of the Post-Conflict Environment

• Absence/weak framework for effective implementation of policy
• Poor allocation of funding /delegation of responsibilities to donor agencies
• Poor coordination among donor agencies resulting in duplication of efforts
• Absence of political will to push through existing legislations/policies
• Poor capacity among policy makers
• Absence of credible indicators to measure performance
• Absence of sex-disaggregated data and gender statistics to measure performance
• Exclusionary policy and weak local ownership of the peace  programmes

Policy Recommendations

• Institutionalization of policy interventions enhances sustainability as opposed to Ad-hoc interventions
• Community ownership also enhances sustainability as opposed to the current top-down approach
• Gender mainstreaming in line with the UN Resolution 1325 will ensure protection of women and the girl-child who are usually more vulnerable in post-conflict environment
• Accountability and transparency framework should form essential component of post-conflict peace building process
• Undertake regular M&E to review performance and adjust strategies
• The need to take into cognisance the power of non-military solutions that can help tackle the non-military deep rooted causes of the various conflicts and crises
• The need to adopt an inclusive peace and security approach and ensuring local ownership.

Conclusion

The analysis of Nigeria’s policy response to the Niger-Delta and Boko-Haram crises recognizes the transitionary nature of a post-conflict society and the attendant challenges of human security, economic and political transformations among the plethora issues requiring policy interventions. While the amnesty initiative, and to a smaller extent, the operation safe corridor initiatives have relatively reduced the violence that previously ravaged the Niger Delta and parts of the Northeast; however, the recent upsurge in militancy and sporadic cases of Boko Haram attacks, have raised the critical question of sustaining peace in Nigeria’s post-conflict environment. Sustaining the peace as conceptualized by the UN should aim at rebuilding a more just socio-political order, and preventing a relapse into violent conflicts. That is, the imperative to prevent “the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict”. Addressing the blockades to peace, especially social inequality, injustice, corruption and poverty is crucial to sustainability of peace building and development in Nigeria and other post-conflict societies. In other words, if the fundamental issues provoking conflicts are not tackled, whatever post-conflict peace initiatives and development interventions would only appear to be cosmetic and fleeting responses.

References

Adebayo, J.O. and Matsilele, T. (2019). ‘Nigerian Experience with Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Examining Operation Safe Corridors and the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme’, Journal of African Union Studies, 8 (3), pp 139-160.

Anyadike, O (2017). ―How Jobs Can Help Niger Win the War against Boko Haram. IRIN, July 17, 2017. Available: http://www.irinnews.org/analysis/2017/07/17/how-jobs-can-help-niger-win-waragainst-boko-haram

Bukarti .B 2019.―Making Peace With Enemies: Nigeria‘s Reintegration of  Boko Haram Fighters‖. War on the Rock, Available:  https://warontherocks.com/2019/03/making-peace-with-enemies-nigerias-reintegration-of-boko-haram-fighters

Dode, R. 2015. Nigeria‘s Niger Delta Militancy and the Amnesty Policy:  Beyond the Amnesty. Global Journal of Politics and Law Research, 3(3): 96-10

Ewi, M. 2016. How Nigeria‘s Islamist Insurgency Became the World‘s Deadliest Terrorist Group. Oorsigartikel, 41(1): http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/jch/article/view/336

Felbab-Brown, V. 2018.The Limits of Punishment: Transitional Justice and Violent Extremism: Nigeria Case Study. Institute for Integrated Transitions, United Nations University. Available:  https://i.unu.edu/media/cpr.unu.edu/attachment/2769/3-LoP-Nigeria-Case-Study.pdf

Odoemene, A. 2011. Social Consequences of Environmental Change in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, Journal of Sustainable Development, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 123- 135

Ogege, S.O. 2011. Amnesty Initiative and the Dilemma of Sustainable Development in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria; Canadian Centre for Science and Education.

Reychler, Luc , and Arnim Langer 2006 Researching Peace Building Architecture, Cahiers Internationale Betrekkingen En Vredesonderzoek Vol. 75, Jg. 24. Leuven: Centre for Peace Research and Strategic Studies.

United Nations (2016)   U.N. General Assembly and Security Council “peacebuilding resolutions” (A/RES/70/262 and S/RES/ 2282).