Oil, NGOs & youths: struggles for resource control in the Niger delta

Caroline Ifeka

Review of African Political Economy, 2001, vol. 28, issue 87, 99-105

Abstract: The Niger Delta, one of the world's largest wetlands and the sixth largest exporter of crude oil, is notorious for environmental pollution, poverty and violence. For four decades the Federal Nigerian Government has neglected its obligations to fishing communities in the vicinity of oil wells or facing offshore platforms. Although the Federal Government takes 60% of the dollar sales of crude oil (40% goes to the oil companies), the political class has declined to regulate gas flaring, pipeline maintenance or levels of spillage. Frustrated by their exclusion from the benefits of oil, militant youths attack oil company installations, hi‐jack personnel, and lay waste to villages believed to harbour oil reserves, leaving many homeless. These angry subalterns believe that their communities own and should control of the natural resources in their vicinity. The consequence is an increase of casualties in inter‐communal raids and counter‐raids, in wildfires at spillage sites, and in shootings by ‘mobile police’ when demonstrating youths enter the oil installations that they guard.

Date: 2001
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DOI: 10.1080/03056240108704507

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Review of African Political Economy is currently edited by Graham Harrison, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Claire Mercer, Nicolas Pons-Vignon, Aurelia Segatti and Ray Bush

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