Things that work in Nigeria
News from Nigeria usually focuses on violence, corruption, and disaster. We do hear about elections that sort of work and government that tries to make things better (like banning an official Nigerian delegation to the London Olympics). But how about the National Youth Service Corps?University graduates are required to serve a year doing "community development service" in a part of the country away from their homes. It's intended to promote civic involvement and cultural integration. It mostly works. (See the web site above for details or search for NYSC Nigeria for other accounts.)
Xan Rice, reporting in the Washington Post, has another success story from Nigeria. It's about the amnesty program for rebels in the Niger Delta who endangered the country's oil production a couple years ago.
Nigerian rebels swap weapons for welding
This month [40] former militants will graduate from their nine-month welding course in Port Harcourt, the delta’s biggest city, joining thousands of other ex-rebels who have graduated from education or training projects in Nigeria and abroad. They are all beneficiaries of a $405 million-a-year amnesty program that has become an unlikely success story for Nigeria’s government.
When it was started by the late president Umaru Yar’Adua in June 2009, the rebels’ raids on oil installations and personnel had halved oil production from more than 2 million barrels a day to as low as 800,000 a day in January 2009, according to the government’s figures. Few local activists believed the amnesty policy would work.
But within a little more than a year, more than 26,000 “armed agitators” had handed over their weapons in exchange for a $400 monthly payment and a promise of training. The attacks lessened and then stopped. Today oil output is between 2.4 million and 2.6 million barrels a day, the government says…
Electrician trainees
Keeping the rebel leaders happy was crucial to the program’s success. It helped that President Goodluck Jonathan, who played an important role in negotiations with the militants while he was vice president, was from the delta region…
Detractors also say the program has done little to address the underlying issues that caused the militancy. Despite its oil riches, the delta remains poor, underdeveloped and polluted.
[Lawrence Pepple, technical adviser on reintegration for the Niger Delta Amnesty Program,] acknowledges the continued challenges but said the amnesty program was never supposed to be “a panacea for all the problems. . . . Our mandate was the cessation of hostilities, and it has achieved that.”
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Labels: cleavages, demographics, economics, Nigeria, politics
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:00 AM
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From Vangaurd (Lagos)
Fashola Assures Corps Members of Adequate Security
"Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has assured corps members posted to the state that adequate security... had been put in place.
"He said this at the closing ceremony of 2012 NYSC batch 'B' Orientation Camp at Iyana-Ipaja, Lagos...
"Gov. Fashola... said: 'Government has put in place sophisticated security apparatus to counter any unwarranted insurgence in the state. You are expected to report any suspicious movement or activities around you through these toll-free lines (767 and 112) for prompt action.'
"Fashola also promised corps members serving in the state that his government would not relent at ensuring that sufficient opportunities were created and made available to them to excel in the implementation of government programmes, particularly in the areas of education, agriculture, rural health care delivery, environmental sanitation and beautification programme"
Oops! The source of the article above is the newspaper Vanguard. Sorry about the misspelling.
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