Nigeria’s Niger Delta: Understanding the Complex Drivers of Violent Oil-related Conflict

Abstract

This paper explores the complex roots and dimensions of the Niger
Delta conflict which has escalated from ethnic minority protests against
the federal Nigerian State-Oil Multinationals’ alliance in the 1990’s to
the current insurgency that has attracted worldwide attention. It also
raises some conceptual issues drawn from ‘snapshots’ taken from
various perspectives in grappling with the complex roots of the oilrelated
conflict in the paradoxically oil-rich but impoverished region as
an important step in a nuanced reading of the local, national and
international ramifications of the conflict and its implications for Nigeria’s
development. The conflict is then located both in the struggle of ethnic
minority groups for local autonomy and the control of their natural
resources (including oil), and the contradictions spawned by the
transnational production of oil in the region. The transition from
resistance – as-protest – to insurgency, as represented by attacks on
state and oil company targets by the Movement for the Emancipation
of the Niger Delta (MEND), is also critically analyzed.