Introduction
The [Niger Delta] is at the base of Nigeria and it's like putting a keg of gunpowder under Nigeria. If the Delta explodes, Nigeria goes with it. (Maier 2000, 13)
Nigeria's Niger Delta region is home to an estimated 33 million people (Ibeanu 2006). It covers an area of about 70,000 square kilometres and is ranked among the top 10 coastal marine ecosystems in the world (Civil Liberties Organisation 1996; Omotola 2006). The Delta wetland comprises 36,000 square kilometres of marshland, creeks, tributaries and lagoons. The region has a high biodiversity and a miscellany of flora and fauna (Agbiboa 2011a; Obi 2009). During her travels in West Africa, Mary Kingsley notes:
I believe that the great swamp region of the Bight of Biafra [Niger Delta] is the greatest in the World, and that in its immensity and gloom, it has the grandeur equal to that of the Himalayas (cited in Onwuka 1956, 19).
Yet, today, the Niger Delta remains one of the most fragile ecosystems and the most endangered delta in the world (Okuyade 2011). The geopolitics of the Niger Delta involves nine states (see Figure 1). The region is also a melting pot for more than 25 ethnic minority groups, with the Ogoni and the Ijaw featuring prominently (Oyerinde 1998).
Map of Nigeria numerically showing the states of the Niger Delta region.
Source: Wikipedia, Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_Delta. Retrieved on 16 May 2011. Notes: [1] Abia; [2] Akwa Ibom; [3] Bayelsa; [4] Cross River; [5] Delta; [6] Edo; [7]. Imo; [8]. Ondo; [9]. Rivers.
Oil in the Niger Delta was first discovered in the Niger Delta by Shell D'Archy in 1956. The region currently holds an estimated 33 billion barrels of crude oil, with its natural gas reserves amounting to roughly 160 trillion cubic feet (Omotola 2009). Most importantly, the Niger Delta's oil is the mainstay of the Nigerian economy, accounting for 95% of the country's foreign exchange and 80% of state revenues (Agbiboa 2011b). This translates to about US$20 billion annually or US$54 million daily (Ibeanu 2006). However, decades of elite corruption and opportunism have debarred the potential benefits of the oil industry from trickling down meaningfully to many in the Niger Delta. Indeed, the presence of oil in the region has been described as a curse rather than a blessing (Obi 2009; Omotola 2009).
Drawing on a report from the World Bank, Jerome Afiekhena (2005, 15) estimates that:
… about 80% of Nigeria's oil and natural gas revenues accrue to one percent of the country's population. The other 99% of the population receives the remaining 20% of the oil and gas revenues, leaving Nigeria with the lowest per-capita oil export earning put at $212 per person in 2004.
The fact that such ill-gotten wealth is usually stashed in hard-to-trace bank accounts overseas further robs the state of productive capital. As noted by one commentator, ‘corruption has become [Nigeria's] major export apart from oil’ (Ojodu 1992, 8). Today, the Niger Delta area remains ‘the ultimate desecration and monumental testament to the failure and criminality of our ruling class’ (Ogbunwezeh 2009, 1). A study by Okechukwu Ibeanu (2006, 11) reveals that:
There is one doctor per 82,000 people, rising to one doctor per 132,000 people in some areas, especially the rural areas, which is more than three times the national average of 40,000 people per doctor. Only 27% of people in the Delta have access to safe drinking water and about 30% of households have access to electricity.
Worse still, oil operations in the Niger Delta have impacted disastrously on the socio-physical environment of the oil-bearing communities, massively threatening the subsistent peasant economy and the environment and hence the entire livelihood and basic survival of the people (Eteng 1997).
The burden of this essay is not to rehearse existing narratives on the causes of the Niger Delta problematic, since a large corpus of work already exists on the subject matter (see Ikelegbe 2005; Omotola 2009; Naanen 1995; Ross 2003). Instead, this paper provides a new empirical angle to the Niger Delta conflict by assessing the impact of the 2009 amnesty programme on resistance movement in the region. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. The second part sketches a conceptual analysis of environmental security and argues that mainstream environmental literature articulates a strong nexus between environmental degradation and conflict flares. The third part explores the relationship between oil pollution, human rights abuses and the tragedy of development in the Niger Delta. The fourth part draws on the theory of relative deprivation and Edward Azar's protracted social conflicts to delineate the movement of the Niger Delta crisis from grievance to violence. The fifth part comprises a brief case study of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). In the sixth part, the paper critically examines the amnesty programme in the Niger Delta. The final part provides concluding remarks.
Conceptual analysis
Environmental security is commonly theorised as ‘the relative public safety of environmental damages caused by natural or human processes due to ignorance, accident, mismanagement or design and originating within or across the national borders’ (Glenn et al. 1998, 1–2). The notion of environmental security encompasses ‘freedom from social instability due to environmental degradation’ (Omotola 2006, 76). Inversely, ‘environmental insecurity’ captures the ‘vulnerability of people to environmental degradation’ (Barnett 2001, 8). Elsewhere, environmental insecurity is defined as a situation ‘where rates of extraction exceed the rate of recovery of ‘renewable’ resources (natural capital), or non-renewable resources are depleted’ (Obi 2000, 50). This may occur in cases where the operations of the oil industry run contrary to the required minimum international safety standards.
Writ large, mainstream literature on environmental security articulates a strong nexus between environmental degradation and the escalation of conflict (Collier 2000; Ikelegbe 2005; Obi 2009; Okonta 2006; Omeje 2006; World Bank 2000). In this regard, two fundamental theses are instructive:
Thesis I: Environmental degradation is a potential catalyst for conflict rather than a sole determinant. Passages in support of this thesis have gained increased currency since the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. Peter Gleditsch (1997, 251), for example, contends that ‘global environmental degradation … as well as the depletion of renewable resources … and non-renewable resources … are major contributing factors to conflicts.’ Opschoor (1989, 137) similarly argues that ‘ecological stress and the consequences thereof may exacerbate tension within and between countries.’ For his part, Renner (1999) maintains that ‘the depletion of freshwater resources, excessive exploitation of fisheries, degradation of land, and deforestation not only affect human health and well-being and imperil the habitability of some regions, but they … play a key role in exacerbating some conflicts.’
Thesis II: The poor and marginalised communities suffer disproportionately from the effects of environmental degradation. In this connection, Edwards (1995, 36) expresses consternation over the fact that those who live or work in close proximity to the source, storage destination, or waste stream of environmental contaminants bear most of the burden and risks associated with their production. By contrast, ‘the economic benefits of production are concentrated among wealthier groups whose communities are insulated by distance from their daily exposure.’ Edwards' avowal resonates with that of Pulido (1996, xv) who powerfully argues that ‘It is … the poor and marginalized of the world who often [suffer from] pollution and resource degradation simply because they are vulnerable or lack alternatives.’
Nowhere are these two above theses better illustrated than in the Niger Delta region. If one adopts a broad definition of security as ‘the assurance people have that they will continue to enjoy those things that are most important to their survival and well-being’ (Soroos 1997, 236), then it is appropriate to argue that years of oil operations in the Niger Delta have had a minatory influence on security in the region, resulting in ‘violations variously of rights to an adequate standard of living, to adequate food, to water, to adequate housing, to health and to life’ (Amnesty International 2009, 13).
Oil pollution, human rights violations and the tragedy of development in the Niger Delta
For many oil-bearing communities, especially in developing regions, the net effects of oil production have been devastating. Many years of campaigning by local people and by their allies abroad have, in the words of Shelley (2005, 155), ‘highlighted the double standards often applied by oil companies and financial institutions, which are far more likely to demand environmental and social mitigation efforts in, say, the North Sea or Alaska than in a more remote district of a developing country far away’ (emphasis added). The main concern of this paper is the Niger Delta region of Nigeria where the benefits from the oil industry have been dwarfed by the enormous human and environmental cost, resulting in a tragedy of development.
Going by World Bank estimates, there are 300 major spills of oil annually in the Rivers and Delta States of Nigeria. In the same country almost 90% of the natural gas produced alongside oil has been flared for decades, burned off into the atmosphere at the rate of some 80 billion cubic feet per year (Okonta and Douglas 2001). According to Shelley (2005, 155), ‘flaring near to settlements has meant that some communities have not had a dark night for years. The rain is acidic and crops and animal life are destroyed.’ A recent study by Amnesty International (2009, 13) shows that, ‘the damage from oil operations is chronic and cumulative, and has acted synergistically with other sources of environmental stress to result in a severely impaired coastal ecosystem and compromised the livelihoods and health of the region's impoverished residents.’
The phenomenon of ‘gas flaring’ and its negative impact on the human and environmental wellbeing of the Niger Delta region is noteworthy. According to one World Bank study, around ‘76% of all the natural gas from petroleum production in Nigeria is flared vis-à-vis 0.6% in the US, 4.3% in the UK and 21% in Libya’ (Na'Allah 1998, 68). The study also showed that gas flares release 35 million tons of carbon dioxide a year and 12 million tons of methane (Omotola 2006). Some of the gaseous pollutants released into the atmosphere such as carbon monoxide, chlorine, nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, acid aerosol, beryllium etc, are notorious for causing headaches, heart problems, irritation, oedema, dizziness, dysentery, asthma and gene or neuron problems, depending on the pollutants (Amnesty International 2009; CLO 1996; Soremekun and Obadare 1998). The health and ecological hazards caused by excessive gas flaring are also highlighted by Ake (1996, 62): ‘At temperatures of 1300–1400 degrees centigrade, the multitudes of flares heat up everything, causing noise pollution, and producing CO2, VOC, CO, NOX and percolates around the clock.’
Gas flaring aside, oil spillage is another primary cause of environmental pollution in the Niger Delta. A study conducted by the UNDP (2006, 184) shows that ‘a total of 1,100,000 barrels oil was spilled in the Niger Delta between 1979 and 2005’. This excludes unreported oil spills. Repeated oil spillage is partly responsible for the soaring rate of unemployment in the region (Omotola 2009), since the majority of Niger Delta inhabitants were historically farmers and fishermen. In addition, owing to the continual pollution of streams and creeks, fish can only be caught in deeper and offshore waters for which the Niger Deltans are ill-equipped (Na'Allah 1998). In 1972, an incidence of oil spillage (by Shell) that occurred at Dere – a small village in the Niger Delta – was so devastating that ‘20,000 people lost their means of livelihood. Acid rain fell on the area for months following this and both children and adults coughed blood’ (Saro-Wiwa 1992, 44). Worse still, ‘a High Court presided over by a British-born judge awarded damages against Shell [to the paltry sum of] £168,468, thus pre-empting the imposition of fines of tens of millions of dollars agreed upon by a special governmental committee set up to investigate the matter’ (Ibid.; Na'Allah 1998).
As at the end of 1998, Shell was involved in over 500 pending court cases of which 352 were related to oil spills (Frynas 2000; Omeje 2006). Notably, while Shell set up its first oil rig in the Niger Delta region in 1958, not a single satisfactory Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been conducted in the region before operations begin, to determine what potential harmful effects such oil activities are likely to have on the area (Agbiboa 2011b; CLO 1996; Okonta and Douglas 2003). Yet, the same oil juggernaut painstakingly conducts EIAs for its operations in Europe and North America (Amnesty International 2009). This reinforces the double-standard practice of oil multinational companies in developing countries. The following Ogoni song sums up the loathed presence of Shell in the Niger Delta region:
The flames of Shell are flames of hell
We bask below their light
Nought for us serve the blight
Of cursed neglect and cursed Shell
(Saro-Wiwa 1995, 79)
It should be stressed here that government and corporate inertia towards cleaning up oil spills in the Niger Delta has often increased the chances of outbreaks of fire, with serious consequences for lives and properties. A case in point is the Jesse explosion and outbreak of fire of 1998, which needlessly claimed around 1000 lives in the Niger Delta (Amnesty International 2009). In fact, the human rights violations in the Niger Delta, especially with regards to oil pollution, often go underreported (or unreported) and have received less attention from the Nigerian government and oil multinationals. A precis of the oil-related human rights violations in the Niger Delta, as revealed by the most recent Amnesty International study, is spotlighted below:
- 1.
Violations of the right to an adequate standard of living, including the right to food – as a consequence of the impact of oil-related pollution and environmental damage on agriculture and fisheries, which are the main sources of food for many [Niger Deltans].
- 2.
Violations of the right to gain a living through work – also as a consequence of widespread damage to agriculture and fisheries, because these are also the main sources of livelihood for many people in the Niger Delta
- 3.
Violations of the right to health – which arise from failure to secure the underlying determinants of health, including a healthy environment, and failure to enforce laws to protect the environment and prevent pollution.
- 4.
The absence of any adequate monitoring of the human impacts of oil-related pollution – despite the fact that the oil industry in the Niger Delta is operating in a relatively densely populated area characterised by high levels of poverty and vulnerability (Amnesty International 2009, 10).
Environmental insecurity and human rights violations are not unrelated to the tragedy of development in the Niger Delta. Michael Watts (2008, 44), for example, argues that ‘by any measure of social achievement the oil states [in Nigeria] are a calamity’, marked by ‘nestled shacks, broken-down canoes, and children who will be lucky to reach adulthood’. Similarly, Osha (2006, 17) contends that ‘what marks out the [Niger Delta] region in recent years is its chronic underdevelopment, the jolting sense of neglect that engulfs the place and the general misery and violence that govern the lives of most of its inhabitants.’ To address this uneasy state of affairs, particularly in Ogoniland, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was founded in the early 1990s. MOSOP instantly became an articulate rallying point for the people. The raison d’être of MOSOP was primarily to enable the Ogonis – the largest ethnic minority group in the Niger Delta – to press for reprieve, to gain a degree of autonomy, and to draw international attention through the 1990 Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR) (Ojo 1996).
The OBR (1990) bemoaned the fact (1) ‘that the search for oil has caused severe land and food shortages in Ogoniland one of the most densely populated areas of Africa’; (2) ‘that neglectful environmental pollution laws and substandard inspection techniques of the federal authorities have led to the complete degradation of the Ogoni environment turning our homeland into an ecological disaster’; and (3) ‘that it is intolerable that one of the richest areas of Nigeria should wallow in abject poverty and destitution’ (OBR 1990, 2–3). The OBR (1990, 2) further called for ‘control and use of Ogoni economic resources for Ogoni development’ and demanded the ‘right to protect the Ogoni environment and ecology from further degradation’.
As MOSOP tabled their problems, and as accusing fingers pointed at Shell, ‘the stage became set for the Ogoni leaders who dared to speak the truth consistently to be persecuted’ (CLO 1996, xii).
The Niger Delta conflict: from sustained grievance to violence
Two theories of conflict are useful for understanding the Niger Delta conflict: (1) the theory of relative deprivation and (2) Edward Azar's (1990) theory of protracted social conflicts. Beginning with the former, the theory of relative deprivation (RD) offers a clear lens through which the movement of the Niger Delta conflict from grievance to violence can be viewed. The RD theory can be gleaned from the works of its finest exponents, such as Gurr (1970), Birrel (1972), and Davies (1962). In his oft-cited work ‘Why men rebel’, Gurr (1970) argues that people become dissatisfied if they feel they have less than they should and could have. Over time, such dissatisfaction leads to frustration and then rebellion against the (real or perceived) source of their deprivation. Drawing on his studies of relative deprivation and conflict in Northern Ireland, Birrel (1972, 317) contends that group tensions develop from a discrepancy between the ‘ought’ and the ‘is’ of collective value satisfaction. In his article entitled ‘Towards a theory of revolution’, Davies (1962, 5) contends that political violence is due to the insupportable gap between what people want and what they get: ‘this discrepancy is a frustrating experience that is sufficiently intense and focused to result in either rebellion or revolution.’ The central point of all these works is that collective violence flourishes within a context of sustained grievances caused by relative deprivation.
As one of the forefathers of the conflict resolution field, Edward Azar was the first to describe violent events in the developing world as Protracted Social Conflicts (PSC), which he defines as follows:
In brief, protracted social conflicts occur when communities are deprived of satisfaction of their basic needs on the basis of the communal identity. However, the deprivation is the result of a complex causal chain involving the role of the state and the pattern of international linkages (Azar, 1990: 12).
Azar further argues that ‘initial conditions (colonial legacy, domestic historical setting, and the multi-communal nature of the society) play important roles in shaping the genesis of protracted social conflict’ (Azar 1990, 12). He suggests that the most significant of all factors that facilitate the formation of PSC are societies that can be characterised as having a ‘multi-communal’ composition. Multi-communal societies, whether formed as a result of divide-and-rule policies of former colonial powers or whether through historical rivalries, often resulted in the dominance of one group over the other, which Azar (1990, 7) states as being ‘characterised by disarticulation between the state and society as a whole. With the state usually dominated by a single communal group or a coalition of a few communal groups that are unresponsive to the needs of other groups in the society.’ Azar claims that efforts to reconcile this by enforcing integration or cooperation ‘retards the nation-building process, strains the social fabric and eventually breeds fragmentation and protracted social conflict’ (Ibid.).
Furthermore, Azar (1990) posits a ‘human needs’ variable which allows us to consider to what extent identity groups are able to access developmental human needs:
The most obvious ontological need is individual and communal physical survival and well-being. Individual or communal survival is contingent upon the satisfaction of basic needs. In the world of physical scarcity, these basic needs are seldom evenly or justly met. Whilst one group of individuals may enjoy satisfaction of those needs in abundance, others do not. Grievances resulting from need deprivation are usually expressed collectively. Failure to redress these grievances by the authority cultivates a niche for a protracted social conflict’ (Azar 1990, 7–8).
Azar (1990) adds that developmental needs do not need to be theorised as primarily physical and neither do such unmet material needs lead directly to conflict. What is key, however, is the degree to which minority groups can access the market or political institutions or the recognition of communal existence. This then leads to us having a much broader understanding of human needs that, if unmet, may become causal variables which will be attempted to be readdressed by violence. Elsewhere, Azar powerfully argues that:
Collective protest is usually met by some degree of repression or suppression. As tension increases, the victimised communal groups begin to draw the attention of their constituents not only to the event itself, but also to a broad range of issues involving communal security, access and security needs (e.g., selective poverty and political inequality). The spillover of the event into multiple issues increases the momentum for organising and mobilizing resources. As the level of communal organisation and mobilization becomes greater, communal groups attempt to formulate more diverse strategies and tactics, which may involve civil disobedience, guerrilla warfare or secessionist movements. (Azar 1990, 13–14)
At the level of state action and strategy, Azar notes that in the majority of cases, the response by states to communal grievances (i.e., the Nigerian state), particularly those which have weak governance structures is usually one of coercive repression or instrumental co-option to avoid outward signs of weakness or defeat.
In many cases, a militant or harsh response constitutes the core of state strategy in coping with communal dissent. Such a hardline strategy invites equally militant responses from repressed groups. Co-option could serve to mitigate communal grievances, but it is usually perceived as being a tactical maneuver to fragment the opposition and divert its attention. Failure of the co-option strategy further justifies coercive repressive options, leading to an upward spiral of violent clashes. (Azar 1990, 14)
The foregoing theoretical analyses are implicated in the Niger Delta problematic. The crux of the problem is that the Nigerian state has centralised the ownership and control of oil resources in such a way that nearly all component states and local government areas depend primarily on transfers (Uzodike Allen, and Wetho 2010, 172). The Niger Delta people argue that others far removed from the harrowing effects of oil exploitation have been enabled to benefit inordinately from the oil resources of the Niger Delta due to their dominant political power (Agbiboa 2011b; Ikein 1990; Obi 2009). While entrenching and nurturing the hegemony of the country's three major ethnicities (namely, the Hausa-Fulani, Igbo and Yoruba), Nigeria's three-legged federal system legitimised ‘the expropriation of the resources of the oil-producing communities as part of an official strategy of centralised national cake-sharing’ (Suberu 1996, xii).
This aside, rather than serve as a safety net for the abused, the law in Nigeria is a leviathan, an instrument of elite expropriation and denial in the Niger Delta (Frynas 2000). At best, the Nigerian legal system has been remote, inaccessible and expensive, for the wider society. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the provisions of the elitist Land Use Act of 1976 which arrogated to the Nigerian federal government the exclusive power to claim ownership rights over community lands in the Niger Delta, thus contravening the common law doctrine of ‘quic quid plantatur solo cedit/what is attached to the land accrues to the land and belongs to the owner’ (Agbiboa 2011b, 12). By government fiat, land ownership licences were issued to oil multinationals, ‘without any meaningful consultation with the local people’ (CLO 1996, 6).
Beginning in the early 1990s, the struggle for survival intensified in the Niger Delta, much to the discomfiture of Shell and the Nigerian state. Killing the goose that lays the golden egg became the option for the military junta of the day. But this is hardly surprising if we recall the words of the late Nigerian scholar, Claude Ake (1992, 16): ‘more often than not, the post-colonial state in Nigeria presented itself as an apparatus of violence, and while its base in social forces remained extremely narrow it relied unduly on coercion for compliance, rather than authority.’ The Niger Delta was effectively turned into a ‘slaughterhouse’, following the emplacement of draconian laws designed to unleash terror and to command compliance in the Niger Delta. As summarised by Suberu (1996, xii), these laws include
… the proscription of ethnic minority associations; the confinement, detention, arbitrary conviction and/or imprisonment of outspoken oil minority elites; the violent suppression, by military force, of protests, demonstrations and uprisings by oil minority communities; and the official declaration of ethnic minority agitations for self-determination, or any disturbances of oil production activities for that matter, as a seditious or treasonable offence punishable with the death penalty!
As the leader of MOSOP, Saro-Wiwa had been the sharpest thorn in the flesh of the Nigerian military regime. The junta found him a much more principled fighter for what he believed to be right and just. However, on the 21 May 1994, during a secret meeting held by a left wing of MOSOP, four prominent Ogoni chiefs were gruesomely murdered. Subsequently, Saro-Wiwa and eight others were arrested and charged with inciting the youths to murder. They were later arraigned before a ‘special’ military tribunal, which sentenced them to death by hanging. According to the famous Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka (1996), the execution of Saro-Wiwa was intended to eliminate the pivotal figure of opposition around which a united Delta front could emerge. He was correct in this, as, following the death of Saro-Wiwa, MOSOP declined appreciably.
Democracy has not been the instant panacea many Nigerians, especially the Niger Deltans, hoped for on 29 May 1999. Like his military predecessors, President Olusegun Obasanjo relied on military force to silence dissenting voices in the Niger Delta. Ake eloquently describes this situation as the ‘militarisation of commerce’ and ‘privatization of the state’ (Rowell, Marriot and Stockman 2005, 15). Cases of violent actions by the Obasanjo-led government include: (1) the invasion of Odi Town on the direct orders of Obasanjo in revenge for the murder of 12 policemen by youths in the town in 1999. Over 2000 people were killed and properties razed; (2) brutal rapes of women and young girls by Nigerian Army personnel in Choba; and (3) the massacre in 2000 of 15 youth protesters in Tebidaba (INAA 2000, 16). While Shell has been strongly linked to ‘spate of killings, rapes, and inter-communal feuds’ in the Niger Delta, ‘not a single one of the industrialised countries that makes use of Shell's oil has called for sanctions to be imposed on the oil companies operating in the Niger Delta’ (Douglas et al. 2004, 8).
It was Edmond Keller (1983, 274) who once argued that an overreliance on ‘intimidatory techniques’ not only presents the ‘image of a state which is low in legitimacy and desperately struggling to survive’, but also ‘in the long run can do more to threaten state coherence than to aid it’. Keller's words turned out prophetic, with the mushrooming of local resistance movements in the Niger Delta, many of which adopted the same pedagogy of violence used by the Nigerian state. According to Omeje (2006, 59), the principal methods of violence employed by the local resistance movements, who comprise the ‘armed vanguard of the anti-oil campaign’, include ‘kidnapping of oil workers for a ransom, explosion of oil pipelines, attacks on oil installations (e.g., wells, exploration sites, flow stations), and abduction of oil workers and some of the government security personnel deployed to safeguard oil installations and activities’.
It is important to note that while most of the local resistance movement seemed motivated by genuine concerns, ‘the process has since acquired a logic and momentum of its own with large sections of the protagonists hustling and jostling for rentier dividends on high stakes’ (Omeje 2006, 59). These sections of the local resistance movement thrive on the existence and persistence of petro-conflicts and bring into bold relief what Ikelegbe (2005, 208) describes as ‘the conflict economy in the Niger Delta, comprising an incessant and violent struggle for resource opportunities, inter and intra communal ethnic conflicts over resources and the theft and trading in refined and crude oil, which has blossomed since the 1990s’. In particular, through ‘oil bunkering’ (i.e., stealing of large quantities of crude oil from perforated pipelines, barges and other delicate sources) ethnic militias have institutionalised ‘high stake processes of accumulation as normal patterns of livelihood’ (Omeje 2006, 59). The expanding ‘business’ of oil bunkering causes the state to lose roughly US$50 million in revenue on a weekly basis (Ibid.). Moving on, the next section considers arguably the most notorious resistance movement to have emerged from the Niger Delta: the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).
MEND and the militarisation of resistance
… remember your seventy-year-old grandmother who still farms before she eats; remember also your poverty stricken people; remember too your petroleum which is being pumped out daily from your veins, and then fight for your freedom.1
With its origins in the Ijaw ethnic minority group dispersed across the coastal states of the Niger Delta, MEND is the largest and most dangerous of all resistance groups to have emerged from the Niger Delta. According to MEND and its supporters, the Niger Delta people have suffered from decades of environmental degradation due largely to unregulated pollution produced by oil companies operating in the area (Watts 2008). This is facilitated by national state policies that continue to deprive local communities of their land in favour of foreign oil interests and capitalist expansion (Omotola 2006).
The Economist (18 September 2008) describes MEND as a:
… political organisation that wants a greater share of Nigeria's oil revenues to go to the impoverished region that sits atop the oil. In fact, it is more of an umbrella organisation for several armed groups, which it sometimes pays in cash or guns to launch attacks.
This description resonates with a statement made by Jomo Gbomo, a spokesperson for at least one of MEND's factions: ‘MEND is an amalgam of all arm bearing groups in the Niger Delta fighting for the control of oil revenue by indigenes of the Niger Delta who have had relatively no benefits from the exploitation of our mineral resources by the Nigerian government and oil companies over the last fifty years’ (cited in Obi 2009, 123). Ike Okonta, author of Behind the mask: explaining the emergence of the MEND militia in Nigeria's oil-bearing Niger Delta, interviewed some of MEND's declared members directly and describes the group as not so much an ‘organisation’ but ‘an idea in which many civic, communal, and political groups, each with its own specificity and grievances, have bought into’ (Okonta 2006, 4).
Membership in MEND is reputed to be fluid, with militants involved with several groups simultaneously or concurrently (Daily Trust, 23 May 2009; Jamestown Foundation, 26 April 2007). Jomo Gbomo indicates that the group's members are ‘volunteers’ (The Guardian 21 March 2006). Furthermore, a majority of MEND members are reported to be from the Ijaw ethnic group (Okonta 2006; Council on Foreign Relations, 22 March 2007; Lionberger 2007, 73–74), which is the largest ethnic group in the Niger Delta (Daily Trust, 23 May 2009; Small Arms Survey, 2007, 123). The Jamestown Foundation, a research institution based in Washington, DC, indicates that MEND, which draws members from communities across the Niger Delta, differs from other cults and ethnic militias by ‘placing its struggle in a social rather than ethnic context’ (Jamestown Foundation, 26 April 2007).
On many occasions, MEND has been profiled by the Memorial Institute for Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) as ‘an active terrorist group that uses violent means to support the rights of the ethnic Ijaw people in the Niger Delta’ (MIPT 2006). The MIPT further notes that:
… led by a notoriously shadowy and secretive elite cadre, MEND's ultimate goal is to expel foreign oil companies and Nigerians not indigenous to the Delta region from Ijawland. In the short run, the group wishes to increase local control over the money made from the exploitation of the region's abundant natural resources. (Ibid.)
In its cosmetic focus on labelling MEND as a terrorist group that constitutes an imminent threat to Western energy interests, MIPT failed to appreciate the background events in the Niger Delta that led to the emergence of MEND in January 2006.
A more nuanced view is provided by Ike Okonta (2007, 711) who locates the emergence of MEND within ‘the lethal cocktail of economic deprivation, military dictatorship and worsening environmental crisis’ in the Niger Delta, and its tapping into ‘the fifty year Ijaw quest for social and environmental justice in the Niger Delta’. Beyond this, while MEND has kidnapped foreign oil workers as part of resistance movement:
… it has released all such hostages after a period, all unharmed, giving credence to the view that they are used to draw international attention to the injustice in the region, seen as an important aspect in globalising local resistance in the Niger Delta. (Obi 2009, 123)
According to Omeje (2006, 59), ‘it is only in rare cases of explosive conflicts or in cases of perceived recalcitrance of the TNOCS (transnational oil companies) after repeated entreaties that abducted oil workers have been murdered.’ Writing in the Stanford Progressive, Shadi Bushra (2009) powerfully observes that:
… the overarching theme of this and similar resistance efforts, the liberation of a land occupied by an irresponsible foreign goliath cannot be dismissed as ‘terrorism’. It is this oversimplification that forces people into arms. Whenever we regard the pain of others, regardless of how many borders or oceans are between us, with indifference, we open the door for such violent groups. We invite them into a world which doesn't recognize a shared purpose, but instead chooses to reward those who recklessly pursue power and wealth. Without addressing the problems we have all helped fashion, we have all but invited such extremism into our shared world.
MEND's avowed goals are to localise control of Nigeria's oil and to secure reparations from the federal government for decades of pollution caused by the oil industry. In an interview with one of the group's leaders, Major-General Godswill Tamuno, the BBC reported that MEND was fighting for ‘total control’ of the Niger Delta's oil wealth, saying that local people had been deprived of the riches under the ground and the region's creeks and swamps (BBC News Online, 20 April 2006). MEND's goals were also built around notions of ‘fiscal federalism’ (a return to the 1960 constitutions which allowed regions to retain 50% of locally generated revenues), resource control and a stinging critique of an unregulated oil industry (Nwajiaku-Dahou 2012). The latter is corroborated by a recent report by Amnesty International (2009, 81) which shows that ‘the regulatory system in the Niger Delta is deeply flawed and lacks independence. The oil companies are too involved in the regulatory system, and the main government agency is both ineffective and represents conflicting interests.’ Press statements in 2007 called for Shell to make a court-sanctioned US$1.5 billion compensation to local communities in Ijaw territory.
MEND has been linked to attacks on petroleum operations in Nigeria as part of the conflict in the Niger Delta, engaging in actions including sabotage, theft, property destruction, guerrilla warfare and kidnapping. In a January 2006 email, MEND warned the oil industry: ‘It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets. Leave our land while you can or die in it …. Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil.’ Specifically, MEND is notorious for kidnapping foreign oil workers and demanding huge ransom for their release (Okonta 2006). For example, in January 2007, ‘at least 50 foreigners were taken hostage … That compares to a total of around 70 foreigners snatched in the whole of 2006’ (Obi 2009, 104). Moreover, attacks by MEND on oil facilities have featured prominently in global media; in some cases, the group has given information prior to attacks, showing the inability of the Nigerian security forces to forestall its attacks. Furthermore, the group gained world publicity through its threats to ‘cripple the Nigerian oil exports’ (IRIN 2006, 3). True to its threat, attacks by MEND forced oil production shutdowns in Nigeria of up to 800,000 barrels per day or over 25% of the country's oil output. By March 2009, crude oil exports had fallen to 1.6 million barrels per day, down from 2.6 million in 2006 (Nwajiaku-Dahou 2012).
MEND has constantly reminded the public that their action was propelled by the desire for justice and fairness. According to the organisation's spokesperson, ‘We are asking for justice. We want our land, and the Nigerian government to transfer all its involvement in the oil industry to host communities which will become shareholders in these oil companies.’2 In April 2009, the idea of an amnesty for repentant militants was first mooted by the late President Yar'Adua in an urgent bid to address the worsening security in the Niger Delta and to curb relentless MEND attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria. The next section explores the impact of this amnesty initiative on resistance movement in the Niger Delta.
The impact of the amnesty on resistance movements in the Niger Delta
According to Ndutimi Alaibe, National Coordinator and Chief Accounting Officer of the Federal Government Amnesty Programme for Niger Delta ex-militants:
The amnesty programme was a response to security conditions in the Niger Delta at the time. It was a response by the then President to reduce fundamentally the violence that was taking place. After consultation with stakeholders, it was decided that there was a need to get the militants to lay down their weapons. That was the basis of the amnesty which was meant to stabilise, consolidate and sustain the security conditions in the Niger Delta region, as a requisite for promoting economic development in the area. (Daily Independent, 3 June 2012)
The amnesty policy was announced by the late President Yar'Adua on the 25 June 2009.
The amnesty policy stated that militants who freely surrender their arms within 60 days (6 August 2009 to 4 October 2009) will not be prosecuted for the crimes committed in the process of disrupting the Nigerian oil industry. President Yar'Adua made clear that the amnesty deal was aimed at reintegrating and rehabilitating militants willing to surrender their arms into the Nigerian society (Onuoha 2011, 52). A member of the presidential amnesty plan, Dr Timiebi Koripamo-Agary, noted that militants are expected to make their way to the nearest screening centre, turn in their arms and ammunitions, take the oath of renunciation (of armed violence) and receive presidential amnesty and unconditional pardon, and then register for a rehabilitation and reintegration programme (Ibid.). According to Korpamo-Agary, the disarmament and subsequent reintegration of the militants is only a first step towards bringing the urgently needed development to the Niger Delta regions, since there cannot be development without peace (www.ipsnews.net).
The disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of militia groups, closely associated with the amnesty deal in the Niger Delta, was a policy recommended by the Niger Delta Technical Committee (NDTC) – a committee established in 2008 by the Nigerian government to determine appropriate peace-building strategies in the restive region (Ibaba 2011). Made up of scholars and opinion leaders drawn from the region, the 40-member committee consulted widely with stakeholders, including the combatants, before making its recommendations. In part, the policy recommendations on DDR state that the federal government should: (1) establish credible and authoritative DDR institutions and process, including international negotiators to plan, implement, and oversee the DDR programmes at regional, state and local government levels; (2) grant amnesty to all Niger Delta militants willing and ready to participate in the DDR programme; (3) work out long-term strategies of human capacity development and reintegration for ex-militants; and (4) exclude from amnesty and criminalise the activities of those militants unwilling to surrender their arms (NDTC 2008, 66).
In particular, state governments were required to support the rebuilding of communities destroyed by military invasion, and establish youth development centres and community demobilisation and reintegration committees to enhance reintegration and capacity building (Ibaba 2011). State governments were also required to provide social amenities, including health centres and schools at the site of former militant camps (NDTC 2008, 67). In July 2009, a budget of N52 billion (US$145 million) was controversially announced for the Amnesty deal intended for 20,192 registered militants. There was an appreciable lack of clarity about exactly how the budget was to be spent and the proportion was to be allocated to monthly allowances, versus the proportion allocated to a broader reintegration and rehabilitation package. Former combatants who registered for the 42-month period of training, reintegration and rehabilitation in government-designated residential training centres received monthly allowances of N65,000 over the same period. This was three times the average salary for a young public sector worker in Nigeria, but just a little higher than the foot soldier salary, which stood at N50,000 (US$400) in 2006 (Nwajiaku-Dahou 2010).
However, the criteria used to establish eligibility for inclusion were largely unclear, with the numbers of intended ‘beneficiaries’ widely believed to have been inflated. According to Abubakar Kari, anyone could claim to be an ex-militant to make some money:
A plain, unemployed youth who was never involved in any militancy, realizing that they could easily make money by claiming or pretending to be militants, have been going into militant camps and so on and demanding that they too should be accommodated within the amnesty program. (Cited in Murdock 2012, 1)
Whatever the case, the amnesty deal saw over 15,000 militants surrender their weapons at the expiry date of the Disarmament and Demobilisation phase (Onuoha 2011, 52). Weapons recovered during the disarmament process included ‘2760 assorted guns, 287,445 ammunitions of different calibre, 18 gun-boats, 763 dynamite sticks, 1090 dynamite caps, 3155 magazines and several other military accessories, such as dynamite cables, bulletproof jackets and jack-knives’ (Onuoha 2011, 52; Ologun and Okeneye 2009, 1–2; Joab-Peterside 2010, 85–98). Many militants also turned themselves in as well, albeit major militant groups like MEND viewed the amnesty policy with suspicion since it made no room for dialogue and did not address the root causes that gave rise to the struggles in the first place. In an interview posted on the Daily Independent newspaper (3 June 2012), Ndutimi Alaibe noted that ‘these militants …wanted assurances … Some of them went to the mundane level of committing me to take an oath with them.’ The popular belief is that militants only handed in a small fraction of their arms as most of them doubted the government's genuine commitment to the amnesty deal (Onuoha 2011).
Although the amnesty deal has led to a lull in violence in the Niger Delta since 2009, this paper argues that it affords only a cosmetic and temporary solution to the conflict. Specifically, cash payouts to armed militants and proposals to give oil-bearing communities a 10% stake in state oil revenues fail to seriously address the underlying issues of ‘government corruption, political sponsorship of violence and environmental degradation’ that continues to fuel resistance in the Niger Delta (Human Rights Watch 2010). As Omeje (2004) argues, what prompted the proposal of the amnesty programme was not the environmental tragedy in the Niger Delta region but the urgent need to put an end to MEND's crippling attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria which has negatively affected the country's oil productivity. In short, ‘the prime concern by the Nigerian state in the management of the oil conflicts in the Niger Delta has been to maximise oil revenues’ (Omeje 2004, 425).
The amnesty programme has also been questioned by some scholars who argue that, by its conception and operation, the programme does not adhere to the fundamentals of the DDR process (Ibaba 2011, 244). As Davideheiser and Kialee (2010, 1) argue:
A DDR program is typically adopted as a means of transition from conflict to peace since its function is to remove one or more of the disputing parties from the scene. Accordingly, peace negotiations generally include DDR clauses, yet in peace-building theory, a DDR program is only expected to comprise the preliminary phases of a much broader process of addressing root causes that initially motivated the combatants. By failing to include the latter, the amnesty program does not conform to this model.
So, the failure of the Nigerian government to negotiate with combatants in the Niger Delta is identified here as a major flaw which dissociates the amnesty programme from DDR. However, scholars like Ibaba (2011, 244) argue that ‘to insist that there must be negotiation between the government and combatants will be ignoring context, and thus missing out the point.’ Ibaba further contends that the Niger Delta violence was championed by a welter of groups, and for this reason, negotiations with combatants could have been disorderly. In addition, he maintains that the amnesty deal satisfies the core phases and goals of DDR, as it adopted the DDR phases and processes of disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (see Table 1).
| Phases | Processes |
|---|---|
| Disarmament (removing the weapons) | Collection and documentation of arms and ammunitions from combatants and development of arms management programme |
| Demobilisation (discharging combatants from their units) | Discharge of active combatants from armed groups and the provision of reinsertion (traditional assistance) in the form of allowances to cover basic needs, short-term education, training and employment |
| Reintegration (the socio-economic process of becoming a civilian) | Status change process from combatant to civilian |
Quite aside, in an interview posted in the Daily Independent newspaper (3 July 2012, 1–2), Ndutimi Alaibe, National Coordinator of the Amnesty Programme, noted that:
Some of the challenges facing the programme today have to do with the background of some of the militants themselves and the initial process of de-briefing. You may take them abroad, and on arrival find that the individual is not even psychologically prepared and then indulge in negative habits and in the process, they get deported. There is therefore need to properly engage the ex-militants to determine their career aspirations before re-integration. The programme has recorded fundamental success in terms of some of them who have been trained in specialised disciplines; and more can still be achieved. There are those who have graduated as pilots. Managing 26,000 ex-militants through reintegration can be very challenging. The cooperation of all stakeholders is imperative.
Conclusion
This paper has assessed the environmental tragedy and oil conflict in the Niger Delta region and the impact of the amnesty programme on local resistance movement in the region. Three years after the amnesty programme, oil-producing communities in the Niger Delta still suffer from grinding poverty and underdevelopment. These communities continue to lack basic infrastructural facilities such as paved roads, pipe-borne water, and stable power supply, while unregulated oil pollution continues to compromise the land and water upon which their livelihood depends. Yar'Adua's announcement of a presidential pardon in 2009 is essentially conceived in this paper as a means of buying off militants and re-establishing oil and gas production in the Niger Delta without dealing with the root causes of sustained grievances and conflict in the region. Moreover, the protracted illness and subsequent death of Yar'Adua – the main architect of the amnesty programme – meant that little real progress was made on the reintegration and rehabilitation front. Ex-militants complained bitterly that promised allowances and training were either not forthcoming or ill suited to their needs.
Unless the Nigerian government seriously addresses underlying problems in the Niger Delta, such as political grievances relating to poverty and underdevelopment, the poor regulation of an environmentally polluting oil industry, and the alienation of local people from rights to land and resources in the Niger Delta, militant activities in the region are likely to resume in earnest. Indeed, the twin bomb blasts of 1 October 2010 in Abuja, as Nigeria marked her fiftieth anniversary of independence, is a clear indication that we are yet to hear the last of local resistance movements in the Niger Delta.
Note on contributor
Daniel Egiegba Agbiboa is an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship and Undergraduate Research Scholarship PhD Scholar in the School of Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University (ANU). He is currently employed as a professional research assistant for a UN research project on transnational corruption and conflict of interest at the Transnational Research Institute on Corruption (TRIC) and the ANU School of Politics and International Relations. His research interest is in the field of African Development, particularly its intersection with corruption, conflict and security. He is the author of over 25 peer-reviewed articles in academic journals, including Third World Quarterly, Journal of Black Studies, Conflict, Security and Development, Peace Review, and Peace Research.