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The amnesty granted to the Niger Delta militants by the Nigerian state has stopped active and sustained physical combat in the oil-rich but volatile region. Yet, peace remains elusive in the area. This article, which relies essentially on secondary sources of data, examines this ‘no war, no peace’ situation by mapping the challenges confronting the amnesty programme and its corollary disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programmes. It is argued that, until the incentives for violence are identified and checked, the age-long grievances of the region against environmental insecurity, underdevelopment, and distributional injustice in oil rents addressed, perpetrators of human rights violations – including extra-judicial murders – brought to book, and victims of human rights abuses and the protracted conflict compensated, the current peace of the graveyard in the region is likely to subsist.

Kidnapping for ransom has resurfaced in the oil-producing Niger Delta region of Nigeria where the state has since 2009 launched the most comprehensive and expensive peace-building policy in the nation's history. Since 2009, about 30,000 fighters had been disarmed and demobilised and their reintegration is ongoing to both local and international acclaim. However, this study reveals that while the amnesty programme and its disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) corollary have drastically reduced direct confrontation between insurgents and state troops, the peace deal indirectly promotes further violence. Politicised peace building has transformed many youth who took to rebellion into millionaires to the envy of others who now resort to violent activities such as oil theft, sea piracy and ransom kidnapping. In addition, many of the initial grievances that led to conflict in the region, including socio-economic marginalisation, youth unemployment, relative poverty and environmental damage, still subsist and continue to propel violence. It is suggested that the state should accelerate massive infrastructure development that maximises benefits to Niger Delta communities rather than individuals, and reinvigorate basic services at the grass roots to minimise the incentives for violence.

In recent years, local and foreign analysts have made tremendous efforts in trying to come to grips with the Boko Haram insurgency that has undermined northern Nigeria in both human and material terms. While some commentators trace the source of violent insecurity in the region to the zero-sum ethnoregional struggle over political power and public goods in the Nigerian federation, especially the alleged opposition to the Goodluck Jonathan presidency, a great number of people blame the insurgency on the jihadist onslaught against open society and secular ideology. Besides pointing out the shortcomings of these mainstream analytical perspectives, this article demonstrates how the inability of the state to effectively discharge many of its statutory obligations fuels disenchantment and engenders anti-state violence from below. Juxtaposing the current Boko Haram insurgency and the Maitatsine revolt of the 1980s, which share commonalities in both ideological and operational terms, the article shows that violent insecurity in much of northern Nigeria is not a "new war" between ethnoreligious groups per se but more of an outcome of governance and development deficits that have trapped the masses in affliction while a handful of governing elite live in affluence.

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