Spoils politics and environmental struggle in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria
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Date
2012-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Zululand
Abstract
The protracted conflict in the Niger Delta communities is currently being diagnosed with a view to understanding the
nature of the resource struggle. From the 1980s, the region’s cry of marginalization and exclusion from oil revenue
allocation was couched in a wave of environmentalism. Environmental activism had assumed the shape of peaceful
community protests against the transnational oil companies and was largely directed at ecological remediation and
environmental justice. Environmentalism has now assumed new dimensions both in demands and strategy. The struggle
has advanced to a low intensity conflict ostensibly against the state which has resulted in the militarization of the region.
Although amnesty has been granted the militants by the federal government since October 2009 as a first step to
resolving the conflict, there has been criticism trailing its framing and implementation that did not take into account some
historical and socio-political antecedents of conflicts in the region. This paper revisits these and applies the greed and
grievance framework to investigate the nature of the conflicts. It examines the pattern of environmentalism and discusses
the complex nature of the conflicts against the curtailment of primordial motivations if environmental justice is to be
achieved. Contrary to the literature, it demonstrates how grievance may manifest in greed in a mutually reinforcing
pattern
Description
Peer reviewed article published under Inkanyiso, Volume 4, Issue 1, Jan 2012, p. 37 - 48
Keywords
Greed, grievance, militancy, Niger Delta, marginalization and exclusion
Citation
Tonwe, D.A., Ojo, G.U. and Aghedo, I., 2012. Spoils politics and environmental struggle in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Inkanyiso: Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 4(1), pp.37-48.