Contrary to the impression that hostility in the Niger Delta region is over, the situation remains fragile and there is a likely return to full blown insurgency within the next six to eighteen months in the region.
This was part of the summations in the report by the United State Institute of Peace (USIP) made available to BusinessWorld last week in Washington, D.C.
The report, sponsored by the Centres of Innovation at the USIP, and Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN) over the past four years in the Niger Delta, has it that the much celebrated amnesty programme only opened a door for stabilization, but did not reduce the long-term potential for violence or deal with root conflict issues, if a “business as usual” approach is taken to interventions.
According to the report, “neither Nigeria nor foreign donors are investing enough to end violent conflict in the Niger Delta. While Nigerian officials opt to buy short-term cease-fires, such as the 2009 amnesty process, other governments spend too little in money and manpower to grow local civil society, engage core conflict issues, or adequately understand the region’s problems.”
The report regrets that all parties have failed to focus on deeper trends when planning their anti-conflict strategies, and   consequence of this, it said, causes them to undervalue the potential costs of on-going violence, as well as the importance of a peaceful Niger Delta to Nigeria’s economic development and global energy security.
Giving its own recipe in going forward, the report said that governance is both at the heart of the conflict and the best place to seek solutions.  To best help to catalyze peace in the region, donors, the report said, should invest heavily in democratization and learn lessons from a decade of setbacks and poor investment choices.
 The researchers believe that international support for governance reform in the Delta must start at the grassroots and that, “donors should also complement their support of governance reform in the Delta with funding for innovative local development work.”
“Reformers in the Niger Delta also have operated too much in isolation. Local and international actors need a multilateral strategy allowing them to combine levers and use each other’s momentum. They must ground this strategy in deeper analysis of the region’s problems and a unified theory of change,” the report added. The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help, prevent and resolve violent international conflicts, promote post-conflict stability and development, as well as increase conflict management capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide. The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by directly engaging in peace building efforts around the globe. It provides the analysis, training and tools that prevent and end conflicts, promotes stability and professionalizes the field of peace building.