A swamp full of dollars: pipelines and paramilitaries in Nigeria's oil frontier, Michael Peel, London, IB Tauris, 2009, 240 pp., £10.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781848858404
Michael Peel's book presents a rich compendium of narratives on oil and armed militancy in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta. The region boasts one of the richest oil reserves in the world, but has at the same time proven to be one of the most dangerous spots for oil exploitation – a poisoned chalice for multinational oil companies. A strategic alliance between the country's greedy political class and oil companies has ensured an irresponsible, but lucrative, mining business leading to environmental degradation and the dispossession of local communities. In response, local armed militants have emerged, thus disrupting ‘business’ through clandestine activities such as the kidnapping of oil expatriates, destruction of oil pipelines and oil bunkering. The state has responded by deploying overwhelming power aimed at crushing these militants, but this has largely failed. Recently, the Nigerian government initiated an amnesty deal with the militants involving monetary inducements, job creation, scholarships for foreign study, and business start-up schemes for armed militants in return for disarmament and the cessation of violence. This, too, has achieved little success owing to allegations of political corruption on the part of the officials of the newly established Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs (MNDA), the Nigeria Delta Development Commission (NDDC), as well as high-ranking political appointees and representatives associated with the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme.
Given the foregoing sordid picture, Peel's book is a timely effort to capture all sides of the story. It chronicles, in equal and engaging measure, the voices and actions of the key actors – militants, state officials, multinational oil companies, peasants and other subaltern groups. Peel renders the whole story in simple and accessible format, particularly for those who want to understand the political economy of the Niger Delta oil exploitation and militancy in a style devoid of intellectual bravado and complex theorising. What Peel does in this work – with spectacular efficiency – is to employ a combination of journalism, history, biography, ethnography, prose, poetry and placid intellectual talk to explore a very complex story. His empirical data are quite privileged, and most of his information was sought through ethnographic techniques. Peel worked as a journalist in Lagos and travelled regularly to the Delta where he met all stakeholders. Of particular importance are his dangerous encounters with armed militants who have built a reputation for abducting oil expatriates and foreign journalists. Peel apparently took huge risks but he survived to tell this incredible tale.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part chronicles the evolution and reality of the Niger Delta conflict using, as a reference point, the author's encounters with some key local figures and armed militants, such as Alhaji Muhajid Dokubo-Asari (Chapter 1), Giedia Dangosu, Chief Inengite and his nephew Sunday Nyigife (Chapter 2) and General Chuwuemeka Ojukwu, the leader of the Biafran secession movement during the country's civil war of 1967–70 (Chapter 3). In addition to encounters with these key actors, Peel also recalls personal conversations with peasants who bear the brunt of oil exploration and its huge environmental hazards to show the horrible human misery associated with primitive accumulation of global capital. The local people lay the blame on Nigerian leaders who, according to them, subjected oil-bearing communities to misery and deprivation by destroying their habitat and denying them any recompense. In this part of the book, one finds graphic accounts of the Niger Delta conflict as one that is unmistakably rooted in the ruthless and carefree policies of multinational oil companies and the local state, which rakes in huge benefits from oil profits, yet subjects the local population to systematic marginalisation, repression and dispossession. In Niger Delta, the ‘paradox of plenty’ has given rise to armed militancy as a form of perverse protest against the irresponsible state and its foreign allies. Decades of ruthless exploitation have seriously damaged the Delta's habitat and people's livelihoods. Thus, militancy and associated activities – the pillaging of oil pipelines, oil bunkering and hostage taking – have emerged both as forms of protest and alternative means of livelihood for the affected communities. The chief target of these militants is the oil pipelines which pass through communal land, plantations, farmlands and fish ponds.
The second part, titled ‘Living at the oil frontline’, reveals urban life and politics in Nigeria's petro-economy (Chapters 4, 5 and 6). Peel shows that the misery is widespread even in urban Nigeria, and its victims are all too familiar: the urban poor, workers, youths and women. A popular West African aphorism cited at the start of this section says it all: ‘Monkey work, baboon chop’. In other words, while the masses and subaltern classes toil to survive, the elites enjoy luxurious lives by exploiting both the people and the largesse of the rentier economy.
In all this, the limitations of the state are laid bare, and people are compelled to devise creative means of livelihood and survival. Of particular importance is the rise of urban subcultures – such as slums and ‘local areas’ – as self-governing and self-perpetuating spaces with improvised rules and social hierarchy. Indeed, they give rise to new forms of exploitative relations – or caricature capitalism – as exemplified by the ‘area boss’ named Adekunle Godwon Talabi who held sway in Lagos Island. Talabi ‘is the sovereign master of government and business. He combines the roles of, among others, tycoon police force and immigration officer. His commercial interests include DVD retail, a barber's saloon, building contractor business and a security company. Most crucially, he is “chief of all boys”’ (p. 67). Talabi's domain and other similar urban subcultures are not necessarily egalitarian or effective, but they are indicative of human ingenuity in building relations of production even in the most hopeless of circumstances. Such urban spaces have defied state control largely for two reasons. First, because they do not pose a significant threat to ruling elites, as the state means of coercion are decidedly geared towards the protection of the elites. Second, because these places provide the bulk of foot soldiers for anti-state protest and networks. No wonder, with its many urban slums, Nigeria's southern regions constitute the hub of environmental militancy and popular democratic struggles in the country.
The third part of the book, ‘The new Gulf conflict’, chronicles the repercussions of the expansion of oil exploitation in Nigeria's wider frontiers – the Gulf of Guinea. In light of the global fuel crisis the Gulf of Guinea has become a new domain of interest for the United States and its allies who are increasingly disconcerted by the unpredictability of crisis-ridden Middle East oil economies. Curiously enough, the US vessels are maintaining ‘a persistent presence’ (p. 138) in this region under the newly established Africa Command (AfriCom). Peel explains the reasons behind this strategic shift:
the region … is a key theatre in the quest to satisfy growing world demand for crude. The US Energy Information Administration has forecast that world oil consumption will rise 37 per cent between 2006 and 2030, although that estimate was made before the global financial crisis and the subsequent sharp fall in prices. The Administration forecast that West Africa production will climb 72 per cent over the same period…. New Gulf of Guinea production … is essential to achieving those growth rates. (p. 145)
Oloibiri and a galaxy of other Deltan communities [have been] transformed [for the worse] by oil production over the past half-century. If it had been in the Western world, Oloibiri might have been a city built on the wealth of the oil it sat on, a Houston, or at least an Aberdeen. Instead the motto of its grammar school –‘sacrifice, sweat and success’– seemed like a cruel joke in a community where getting a fair deal from life was more elusive than the mantra suggested. (p. 28)
The book has been shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award (2009), and received sparkling reviews in The Financial Times, The Independent, The Guardian and The Times, among others. Nevertheless, the book's greatest shortfall is its material rather than intellectual inaccessibility. My experience shows that local scholars, policymakers and other consumers of knowledge often find it difficult to lay their hands on Western books about their own societies. Peel's book is likely to be inaccessible to Nigerian and African scholars and broader audiences, largely due to profit-driven and flawed marketing and distribution structures of Western publishers. It is high time Western publishers ‘twin’ with their local counterparts to produce highly subsidised editions of the books written about African communities and issues.