Niger Delta Militancy & the 2009 Amnesty

Through the mid-2000s, militant groups in the Niger Delta — most prominently the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) — escalated a campaign of pipeline sabotage, oil-platform attacks (including the June 2008 strike on the Shell-operated Bonga FPSO 120 km offshore) and hostage-taking that, at its peak in 2008–09, knocked Nigerian crude production below one million barrels a day from a normal capacity of around 2.5 million. On 25 June 2009 President Umaru Yar'Adua proclaimed a 60-day amnesty under which militants who surrendered their arms would receive a federal stipend, vocational training and access to demobilisation programmes; the Presidential Amnesty Programme was formally inaugurated in August 2009. By 2010 over 26,000 militants had accepted amnesty. The programme remains active and is one of the longest-running federal demobilisation schemes anywhere in Africa, though successive administrations have struggled with allegations of patronage capture by former militant commanders.