 Thank you very much. My name is Tarila, I'm a co-founder of the conflict research network West Africa. And for this research, for this discussion today, I want to reflect on the work that I've been doing for the last few years and to explain, it's not one paper, but it's actually a collection of findings or the dominant ideas that have been matched. What I have learned from conducting research in Nigeria's Niger Delta, and I want to share it with you, but also to reflect on what this means, actually, for peacebuilding. What it means if we are building peace in similar contexts or in other contexts where we have experienced conflicts. And for that, actually, I want to reflect on why militant groups persist in contexts where peacebuilding programs have been implemented. I titled it, the political lives of Am groups after conflict. Why militant groups persist in the Niger Delta. I hope this works, yeah. And to do that, the presentation is structured in a very simple, straightforward way. We reflect briefly on Am militancy in the Niger Delta, its logic, and the peacebuilding project that was implemented to interrupt this logic. And then answer the question why we see a persistence of the group despite implementation of a peacebuilding program, and then, of course, conclusions. Oh, okay. And so in Nigeria's 90 Delta, I've occupied a central place in the conflict literature to the extent that in the late 90s and early 2000s, it merged a militant movement that confronts the Nigerian state, especially in relation to oil. But in the literature, when you critically study the literature and you see the knowledge base that emerge out of what researchers have done, you identify especially three dimensions or three strands of evidence that suggest or that provides an explanation of the violence in the region. First is the natural resource strand. These have been placed, and research shows indeed that competition for access to natural resources has led to arm mobilization, and this competition exists at not just one level actually, but at the local level within communities, local people competing for access to rents, to crude rents at the national level, both governmental and non-governmental, in the sense that governmental, like different levels of government competing for access to crude rents, rents from natural resources, but also elites in government and out of government competing at the national level for access to crude rents, and these factors contribute to the emergence of conflict in the Niger Delta. But beyond access to natural resources, we also see that communal violence, actually, which is an important variable for understanding the conflict in the Niger Delta, as it is not limited, as evidence has shown, and also in my own work, has shown that the conflicts are actually not limited to natural resources, while naturalists play a role that competition within communities for power, competition within communities for land and other historical factors contributes to the emergence of armed conflicts in the Niger Delta. And finally, when we see that electoral violence in the region, which is not limited to the region, but it's a common challenge in the political process in Nigeria as contributed to the accumulation of arms by youth groups that eventually fed into the overhacking conflicts in the Niger Delta. And the lesson we learned from this part of the work is that while in the context of conflict, that there are multiple layers of the conflict, and we just cannot explain conflict with just one framework, and I mean this is reflected in the works of many people even in this room today. But specific then to the Niger Delta, when the conflict emerged and became a real conflict in the sense that an anti-state movement, we see different outcomes actually. And when you look at the research published by many other scholars in this room and even beyond and myself, you see that armed militants emerge in the context of competition for access to natural resources and rents. And you see armed militants participating in illicit economy, like selling crude oil, like extracting crude oil and putting it into the market. But at a formal level, the distribution of crude oil rents is actually determined by state power. So the state remains a dominant actor irrespective of the competition that exists. And the way this power is exercised is to ensure the local communities were actually excluded from the distribution to a larger extent. And that created the notions of grievance, agitations within communities, the idea of exclusion and that. And that also created environmental and political agitations in the 90s which evolved into the armed militancy seeking to challenge state power, the state dominance. So we see an emergence of groups within communities that challenge the dominance of state power to appropriate the benefits of oil. But in my own research, we begin to see that by challenging state power, what armed militants were doing and what community groups were doing was to build a new political power within communities. But by being able to negotiate, to force the state to negotiate, they were developing some kind of political capital within communities. And I argue in my work that the, sorry, that this process created a logic of power within the armed militant struggle. And this means that essentially that when militant groups who are able to establish themselves as opposition to the state and they are able to create this power, they actually become a force or a dominant actor in the logic of power between the state and the communities. The consequence of that is that they actually begin to dominate their own communities. The armed groups become dominant actors in the relationship between the state and the communities. To disrupt that process, one of the consequences of this whole conflict is that the oil sector in Nigeria was significantly affected and Nigeria's government began to lose revenues. And because of that, the state implemented a peace-building project, which in summary demobilization and reintegration program. Introduced in 2009, it's focused on removing armed groups out of conflict. And a typical DDR program that you'll find anywhere in the world, yeah. What I want to emphasize about the DDR program is the structure in the structure, it gave a dominant role to armed groups in designing and implementing the project and the DDR program. And what is the outcome of that actually is that the DDR program, I focus on two key findings which actually from the basis of much of my work is that militant groups, leaders of armed groups were able to use state resources through the DDR program to extend their own political network in the region. And also they were able to maintain their place in the logic of power that has emerged. So this is very important in the conclusions of my work is that the conflict had produced a logic of power that places ex-militants, armed groups, an advantage in the society. And in implementing the peace-building program as it is, that the resources and actually the state violence, not just financial resources, but state violence became resources or became tools used by armed groups to maintain their powers in the community, in the communities. And to do this, this exactly, I mean, in conclusion, this is why militant groups persist in the Niger Delta. And therefore in maintaining their positions of power, they continue to exclude other actors within communities. And what we see in the region is, as you will see in recent times when people ask why do militant groups persist after the DDR programs, is that new groups emerge to challenge this power. And when new groups emerge to challenge this power, it's because of the opportunities, economic opportunities, but also the political opportunities that present themselves to these new groups if they become successful in their challenge and their quest for power. And so again, you see a circle of violence where connected to the illicit economies, new groups, former militants negotiate with new groups and if possible confront them. And key lesson in conclusion, I have one minute. So the key lesson for policy is that when building peace or when designing peace-building programs that we should seek to disrupt the logic of power that has emerged out of violent conflicts. When peace-building programs reinforce this logic, we may have peace, but indeed that we are sustaining the logic of power that is generated from conflict and eventually may lead to further conflict or other forms of conflict that may not be the original conflict we are seeking to resolve from this. I hope that this provides some thoughts for reflections and that I'm happy to provide more answers or respond to your questions as we go. Thank you very much.