The Nigerian government is giving young ex-fighters the opportunity to help secure their country’s food production by providing them the resources and education to become a new generation of farmers. The new agricultural training program is not only an example of the government’s efforts to fulfill its longstanding pledge of reintegrating ex-militants into society productively, but also an example of a peaceful solution that reflects a government’s foresight of what could truly progress the welfare of its country.
In the summer of 2009, then-president of Nigeria, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, declared a general amnesty for the armed militants who had plagued the country’s oil-rich Niger Delta, the area made up of nine states in the south of the country. The region had seen a dramatic rise in attacks on oil refineries and the kidnapping of foreign workers beginning in the early 2000s. Many of the armed fighters were young men living in poverty with few job prospects, who were attempting to take by force what they felt the government owed them.
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