Nigeria oil infrastructure threatened by cuts to amnesty fund

Official warns on state’s plan to slash budget for payments to former Delta militants

The Nigerian government’s decision to cut funding to an amnesty programme for militants in the Niger Delta threatens the country’s oil installations and pipelines, the official running the initiative has warned.
Retired Brigadier General Paul Boroh was speaking after militants attacked an offshore Chevron facility last week, forcing the US energy company to cut production by 35,000 barrels a day.
In 2009, some 30,000 militants, who had sabotaged oil facilities for years, laid down their arms in exchange for cash payments and, in some cases, schooling abroad.

Brig Gen Boroh said that although the programme had kept a fragile peace, it had failed to stimulate the economy or create jobs for former militants.
Since his appointment in August last year by President Muhammadu Buhari, he said he had created an “exit plan” for the programme to be wound down by 2018 through gradual cuts to the number of former fighters receiving monthly payments.
But the 2016 budget, signed into law by Mr Buhari on Friday, cut funding for the programme by around 70 per cent, threatening its sustainability for the rest of the year, Brig Gen Boroh said.
“My concerns are very high. It makes me worry that we cannot sustain the programme”, he said by phone from Abuja, adding that “the Niger Delta is likely to be a major problem” unless the federal government devotes adequate resources and attention to a region where half of the country’s oil is produced.
Another official working on the programme said the government would not allocate any funding in next year’s budget for the programme, meaning that 13,000 former militants would not be paid next year. An alternative to the programme has not been announced by the government.
“What do you think will happen? If the programme just stops, what will happen to these people? They are not going to disappear,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Nigeria is enduring its worst economic slowdown in 15 years, mainly because of the oil price collapse, its main export. The record $30bn budget signed by the president last week seeks to haul the country out of economic crisis with heavy state spending on infrastructure.
The latest attack, responsibility for which was claimed by a newly formed militant group calling itself the Niger Delta Avengers, came three months after a big Shell-operated export terminal was shut down by a sophisticated attack. Nigeria’sproduction has dropped to 1.7m barrels a day, a 20-year low.
Mr Buhari this month pledged to crack down on “vandals and saboteurs” in the Delta. Anger there is rising, stoking fears among many from the region who say the president, a Muslim from a northern state, is targeting prominent people from the Delta in his anti-corruption drive.
Goodluck Jonathan, Mr Buhari’s predecessor, is from the Delta state of Bayelsa, but no big development project in the region was completed on his watch. The amnesty was the only noticeable sign of change, critics say, apart from former militants wearing new gold watches and sporadically distributing portions of their amnesty payments to their communities.