Seventeen years after the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) was launched to disarm and reintegrate former militants from Niger Delta armed groups, survivors who entered the programme as teenagers are gathering in Abuja and Port Harcourt this week to assess how far they have come and how far the programme continues to fall short of its transformative promise.
Many of those who joined armed groups as teenagers -- some as young as 13 -- are now in their late 20s and early 30s. A number have completed university degrees on PAP scholarships and are working in the oil industry, healthcare, or education. Others remain trapped in cycles of poverty and resentment, saying the training and stipend payments promised by the programme were delivered inconsistently and stopped entirely for some beneficiaries without explanation.
One beneficiary, who asked not to be named, described his experience: The amnesty programme gave me a second chance. I have a degree in electrical engineering. I am working. I am grateful. But I know many of my friends from the creeks who got nothing after the first two years, whose stipends stopped, who have gone back to where they came from. That is a failure.
The Presidential Amnesty Programme itself faces an uncertain future, with the Federal Government signalling its intention to wind down the programme by 2028 amid concerns about its long-term cost and questions about whether it has achieved durable demobilisation.
