ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how the failures of the Niger Delta Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), proclaimed by then President Umaru Yar'Adua on 25 June 2009, is linked to contradictions spawned by the petro-politics of the Nigerian state. It argues that the PAP was unsuccessful because it was predicated on reinstating the capacity for optimal extraction of Nigeria's oil resources, while ignoring the question of environmental justice for the majority of the region's people. The chapter interrogates why the PAP failed, and also attempts to highlight the place of petro-politics at the heart of this failure. It analyses petro-politics in Nigeria, and how key militants, given their prior engagements with the Nigerian political class as electoral thugs, became well-adjusted to seeing amnesty as an avenue to collude with state actors and pursue personal gains. President Yar'Adua granted an amnesty in a nationwide broadcast on 25 June 2009 to Niger Delta militants who were willing to give up their arms and renounce militancy.
