THREE YEARS AFTER AMNESTY

When next you meet a former Niger Delta militant, you may be face-to-face with the pilot that would be handling the aircraft flying you across Nigeria. You may be facing Dorathy Effiong, a repentant arms bearer, who has abandoned the world of fighting the state and embraced the amnesty programme of the Federal Government. She has, thanks to the scheme, undertaken a comprehensive training to qualify as a pilot with a license that now enables her to apply her talent, time and energy to serve the society. Again, when next you meet an ex-militant, you may be listening to the story of Clifford Wilson, who after years of life in the creeks as an enemy of the state, has become a pilot as a result of the amnesty granted the militants. Who knows, in the years ahead, he may be firing a jet ferrying the president of the Republic of Nigeria! Still more, when next you meet an ex-militant, he may be Godgift Okoye, a shipbuilder. Leaving the murky world of violence and sabotage behind, he decided to accept the government’s amnesty for those battling the authorities in the Niger Delta. He abandoned his weapons and the perilous life of perpetual uncertainty and settled for the full conditions of the amnesty. When next you meet citizens who have done the transition from years of a bitter armed agitation against the state to persons who have joined other citizens to build the society, you would be meeting the products of the success story of the Amnesty Programme of the Federal Government of Nigeria. The celebrated scheme is marking its third year in operation today, having been proclaimed into full flight on June 25, 2009 by then President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. It was a masterstroke that has since established the government as a caring one, determined to fulfil its main constitutional role of providing enduring security for the people in return for the mandate the people gave it to rule. Amnesty has sharply defined the Nigerian state as a focused one that would deploy all creative means to protect the interests of the people, notably, when it has to do with the main source of the country’s revenue earner – oil. Crude oil sales outside our shores account for more than 90 percent of what we earn in foreign exchange in a world economy driven by oil. What we earn from the commodity is responsible for a large chunk of our social and economic development. All other things that accrue from these, international prestige, influence, respect, the leverage from these, flow directly or indirectly from crude and the creeks of the Niger Delta. The corollary is that a government would be irresponsible to watch unconcerned while that region is allowed to work as it did while the militants stuck to their guns. If it permitted that status quo, then the nation, its government and its people, would all eventually be denied its wealth along with the clout and global respect derived from it. We must ponder over some figures to appreciate what the successful post-Amnesty plan of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration has done for the economy and people of Nigeria. In 2008 alone, we lost N3 trillion as a result of the crisis of the militants in the Niger Delta. Later in the first quarter of 2009, Nigeria’s export dwindled to as low as between 700,000 and 800,000 barrels per day. Add to that the hundreds of lives lost, the insecurity that prevented social, economic and industrial development in the region and you would register the total aura of despair and its spiral effects on every facet of the Nigerian society. In the past three years, Nigeria has banished this spectre of destruction and deprivation, following the faithful prosecution and management of the Amnesty Programme. Our young men and women, in their thousands, are no longer battling the society in anger at perceived injustices. The Amnesty Office under the Presidency, anchored by special adviser to the president and chairman of the programme, Kingsley Kuku, has ensured that these compatriots now see themselves as part of the society, to which they have committed their time, talent and energy to serve. Amnesty has thus become a sort of all-cure magic wand. It has not only arrested the internecine war in the creeks, but has also reintegrated old enemies into the society. There is more: it has added to the productive capacity of the nation by enlisting hitherto parasitic segments of the society to contribute their quota to society. This is rare in the annals of Nigerian, indeed African, history, reversing a forlorn situation that threatened to put an end to the notion of Nigeria as a nation. It is our own Marshall Plan (initiated by the United States of America for the rapid recovery of Western Europe after the devastation caused by World War II). We need to hail the administration for this bold scheme the same way the world has continued to salute the Marshall Plan even decades after the global conflict.