Oil and insurgency in the Niger Delta: managing the complex politics of petrol violence, edited by Cyril Obi and Siri Aas Rustad, Uppsala, Nordic Africa Institute and London, Zed Books, 2011, x + 255 pp., £21.99, ISBN 9781848138070
The story of the Niger Delta has in recent times been told and retold over and over again in scholarly, civil and uncivil advocacy and public policy domains. The story has always been about the hopes, betrayals, dispossessions and attendant contradictions of the politics of oil exploration and exploitation in the region, in all its ramifications, including the vexed issues of environmental insecurity, general underdevelopment, revenue allocation, resource control, and accountability and transparency in the governance of the crude economy. Also included are contradictions in state and corporate responses to the problem, what one commentator describes as ‘placebo as medicine’, and the resultant militarisation of the struggles for environmental justice, arguably an inevitable outcome of the perceived ‘deafness’ and irresponsiveness of state and corporate actors to peaceful agitations that characterised the early stages of the struggles.
Given the huge body of literature on the Niger Delta one might be tempted to ask if there are new and refreshing ways of addressing this subject. Cyril Obi and Siri Rustad's Oil and insurgency in the Niger Delta adds much of value to the debate. The primary objective of the book is to ‘explore the various aspects of the complex causes and dimensions of petrol violence and insecurity in the Niger Delta’ and to reflect ‘the various perspectives on the oil-conflict nexus, and the prospects for sustainable peace’ (p. 10). The book delivers on its promise with coherently structured themes organised in three parts. The first, consisting of contributions from notable names in the field such as Ukoha Ukiwo, Rhuks Ako, Ibaba S. Ibaba and Charles Ukeje, among others, explores the underlying causes of conflicts in the region. All of these authors stress, in varying degrees and dimensions, the culpability of the Nigerian state as well as the forces beneath its weaknesses. The second part, which also draws contributions from reputable scholars on the Niger Delta, most notably Augustine Ikelegbe, devotes attention to analysis of the various actors in the complex politics of petrol violence in the Niger Delta. While the analyses of militant insurgent groups such as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), and attendant security ramifications including criminal violence and the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, are engaging, the focus on the gender dimension of the struggle by Oluwatoyin Oluwaniyi is especially commendable. This is a welcome advance, as most recent collections on the subject have, overtly or covertly, been gender blind. Yet, perhaps there might be more refreshing ways of exploring the gender dimension of the Niger Delta struggle, beyond merely looking at women's protest. This approach only portrays women as victims of violence and as peacebuilders, which they truly are, but as recent studies have shown there is also a sense in which women contribute to the problems, lubricating the wheel of militancy, criminality and violence in the region.
The third part explores the roles and responses of multinational corporations (MNCs) to the Niger Delta question. Again, this also features respectable scholars on the subject, particularly Uwafiokun Idemudia. The two authors here both decry the complicity of the MNCs which, rather than devoting adequate attention to their corporate responsibilities that could help mediate the undesirable consequences of their actions and/or inactions, make profit maximisation and repatriation their ultimate priority. The concluding chapter by the editors is well crafted. Rather than following the conventional pattern of recapitulating the central concerns and message of the collection, Obi and Rustad choose to address one of the most recent efforts at peacebuilding in the region, the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme. After an overview of previous peacebuilding initiatives, and a preliminary assessment of the post-amnesty regime, Obi and Rustad come to the conclusion that the amnesty deal was like ‘a half-open, half-closed window’ (p. 207) for sustainable peacebuilding in the region. The amnesty fails to address the roots of violent conflicts and insurgency, which carries huge costs. There is little or no regard for fundamental issues of accountability, democracy and justice, all of which have been central to the Niger Delta question and are inevitably important for any sustainable peacebuilding efforts in the region. Thus the concluding chapter captures the central message of the various contributions.
Oil and insurgency in the Niger Delta is an outstanding addition to the literature on the Niger Delta. The book offers one of the most up-to-date, comprehensive, empirically rich and historically deep explorations of the Niger Delta question from a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing on history, law, political science, development and environmental studies and peacebuilding. My main worry with the book, however, was the failure of the editors to set out, from the beginning, the theoretical and conceptual insights that inform and frame the book's penetrating analyses of critical issues in the Niger Delta problem. Nevertheless the book provides a balanced and nuanced but radical interpretation of events, elaborated with simple prose and clarity of expression. The book is highly recommended to students, academics, civil society, donors and decision-makers interested not only in finding a lasting solution to insurgency in the Niger Delta, but also in broader questions of energy security in the Gulf of Guinea, as well as stability of the global oil price regime.