'Amnesty' in exchange for so-called 'integration' back into the society? How is that a deal? After all, the people were already 'integrated' in a society, whose traitorous leaders sought to allow racist European thieves to continue colonialist plunder of African resources and pollute African land, water, air and space, and destroy Africans life-giving environment.

YarAdua is making an offer that Nigerians can refuse. Instead YarAdua should allow the local residents COMPLETE control over their natural resources and environment, and have the destructive and thieving colonialist compensate Africans for the horrible destruction of the Delta.

It is a responsible move to grant Amnesty to all freedom Fighters and set a Commission made up of International Observers and seek a lasting peace.

What bothers many Nigerians is about the idea of pick and chose of a people group to pardon which is a bad policy that has lingering repercussion. There are many pardons to go around and the President should not exclude the MASSOB detainees. By ignoring to extend the olive garden to them is another way of saying unless you carry arms and use force you would not be pardoned. Second, it is sheer discrimination to pardon one group and not the other because of their ethnicity.

The Niger Delta militants and the Non-Violent MOSSAB have one thing in common they are both Pressure Groups seeking justice as injured people. The way to deal with their concern is to hear them out and find a solution and not to use threat and force as strategy to resolve it.

Obviously, Mr. YarAdua is confused as to who owes amnesty to whom. A corrupt govt that is killing the locals so as to please the foreign plantation owners, it seems to care about, or the rightful owners of the land and of their resources that have exercised magnanimous forbearance to be reasonable in its demand over the past 5 decades?

Ive just read some readers comments but who should they hand over the wealth of the region to?Is it the same greedy Landowners that sold their selves for greed?let us not deceive ourselves if we hand over the management of wealth to the people,their will be total anarchy because even within the family unit there are rifts and quarells over money some oil companies have compensated for using their land how much more different families,villages,towns,local govts.We must be truthful to ourselves it is our greed tht got us here in the first place.even within local govts and ministries,the greed and corruption is unimaginable.if the companies are paying their taxes,then its the Govt responsibility to take care of development this is not cowboy era we live in a country which govt are responsible for welfare of the citizens anything short of this are seeds for anarchy.those who have commited crimes and have taken lives should be held accountable.Yes colonial masters came to plunder,who gave them the chance?our greedy ancestors who even sold some of us out in the first place.we should stop blaming the oil companies because they didnt come here without permit and besides they pay their taxes.blame the greedy politicians and those in positions who can impact positively the lives of their suffering masses.

The dreams and aspiration of Governor Amaechi are noble indeed but he needs to deliever.we have heard over the years enthusiastic,insipiring speech like this but so far nothing happened.The people of Nigeria and Rivers State in particular live in perpertual fear from robbers and more recently and menacing kidnapping from so called militants and rude trigger happy police or military.I believe security is a number one priority which should be adressed seriously and measures put in place so honest and law abiding citizens do not feel threathened either by the law or the lawless. I hope that the perpertrators of the origins ofmilitancy and kidnapping and assasins would be brought to book and pay heavily for their crimes.Also their should be availabilty of employment by setting up industries and loans should be given to geninue people with a business plan for gainful self employment and not on the premise of being a relation of a politician in power that is why the loan schemes have not worked because they are given to relations and friends of politicians who have no purpose or intention to pay back.look at example the taxi scheme in Odili's era,some of those vehicles are driven by politicians and their family or friends for school run and madam's market trip.We need to see actual changes and Transparency.give positions to people deserving that can actually do the job and not to 'e ma madu' or political favours.