The Niger Delta conflict, for many years, was blamed on myriad forces, including greed, economic exploitation, pollution and ecological damage, resource appropriation and distribution disputes, ethno-religious antagonisms, poverty, unemployment, large-scale infrastructural deficits, corruption, militarization of oil producing communities and election processes, sociopolitical marginalization, cultism, and weapons proliferation. While all of these issues are important, they are not nearly as important as the deliberate roles played by high-level social, economic, and political interests who activated violence as a means to secure economic advantage from the delta's oil industry. This study shines the light on this small, exclusive, and very powerful group whose actions triggered off the violence and yet are at the center of efforts to institute peace including the current disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) program. I argue that unless the contributions of these powerful interests are carefully teased out and the structures they have built to advantage themselves from the conflict are dismantled, peace will remain elusive in the Niger Delta.

This paper attempts to place the African immigrant and the African American in the context of their conditions in the United States. It addresses the issue of Americanization and the development of multiple identities that is fundamental to the contestation of "Blackness" in the United States. More importantly, the study discusses resource allocation and appropriation as critical to understanding the schisms between the African immigrant and the African American, focusing especially on how the conflict and tension potentially benefits other racial categories. It highlights the fact that conflict and tension between both groups result directly from the dominant White racial framing, wherein powerless groups unable to effectively challenge the forces that oppress them, attack themselves or people like themselves. To explain this complex interaction between Whites, African immigrants, and African Americans, this paper develops the theory of manipulative deflection, the central tenet of which is the subjective experience of deprivation that diminishes the construction of a holistic Black identity and produces confusion and conflict among Blacks in the United States.

The armed conflict between militias and government forces in Nigeria's Niger Delta region has spanned for more than two decades, defying all solutions. A disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) program was established in August 2015 in effort to end the violence and has remained in place. It is a radically different approach from past approaches that displayed zero tolerance to all political challenges to oil production or the allocation of oil profits. The approach appeared to be immediately successful in that it forced a ceasefire, engaged militants in planned programs to rehabilitate and reintegrate them into civilian society, and opened up the oil wells (many of which had been shut due to the crisis) with the effect of increasing government revenue, which depends 85% on oil exports. Yet, few studies have attempted to understand the dynamics within the country that are responsible for the design and implementation of this broad policy shift or to understand whether and how the current initiative is able to end the conflict and institute peace beyond the short term. This study, therefore, is important because it provides a critical perspective that anticipates and explains emerging issues with the Niger Delta Amnesty Program, which have implications for DDR adaptation and implementation all over the world. Ultimately, the research demonstrates how the DDR program both transforms the Niger Delta conflict and becomes embroiled in intense contestations not only about the mechanism for transforming the targeted population but also whether and how the program incorporates women who are being deprioritized by the program.