Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria

Omolade Adunbi

Description

Winner, Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology

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Omolade Adunbi investigates the myths behind competing claims to oil wealth in Nigeria's Niger Delta. Looking at ownership of natural resources, oil extraction practices, government control over oil resources, and discourse about oil, Adunbi shows how symbolic claims have created an "oil citizenship." He explores the ways NGOs, militant groups, and community organizers invoke an ancestral promise to defend land disputes, justify disruptive actions, or organize against oil corporations. Policies to control the abundant resources have increased contestations over wealth, transformed the relationship of people to their environment, and produced unique forms of power, governance, and belonging.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Environment, Transnational Networks, and Resource Extraction
1. Sweet Crude: Neoliberalism and the Paradox of Oil Politics
2. The Spatialization of Human and Environmental Rights Practices
3. Mythic Oil: Corporations, Resistance, and the Politics of Claim-making
4. Contesting Landscapes of Wealth: Oil Platforms of Possibilities and Pipelines of Conflict
5. The State's Two Bodies: Creeks of Violence and the City of Sin
6. Oil Wealth Of Violence: The Social and Spatial Construction of Militancy
7. Proclaiming Amnesty, Constructing Peace: Oil and the Silencing of Violence
Conclusion: Beyond The Struggle for Oil Resources
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• African Studies
• Political Science
• African
• African people
• General officer
• Anthropology
• World
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 29 juillet 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253015785
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

OIL WEALTH AND INSURGENCY IN NIGERIA
OIL WEALTH AND INSURGENCY IN NIGERIA
Omolade Adunbi
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Omolade Adunbi
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-253-01569-3 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01573-0 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-253-01578-5 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
Dedicated to the late Bamidele Aturu, a Nigerian human rights leader, attorney, and prodemocracy activist who dedicated his entire life to the service of Nigerians as an advocate for the oppressed and downtrodden .
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Environment, Transnational Networks, and Resource Extraction
1 Sweet Crude: Neoliberalism and the Paradox of Oil Politics
2 The Spatialization of Human and Environmental Rights Practices
3 Mythic Oil: Corporations, Resistance, and the Politics of Claim-Making
4 Contesting Landscapes of Wealth: Oil Platforms of Possibilities and Pipelines of Conflict
5 The State s Two Bodies: Creeks of Violence and the City of Sin
6 Oil Wealth of Violence: The Social and Spatial Construction of Militancy
7 Proclaiming Amnesty, Constructing Peace: Oil and the Silencing of Violence
Conclusion: Beyond the Struggle for Oil Resources
Notes
Bibliography
Index
PREFACE
The federal government of Nigeria derives more than 90 percent of its revenue from oil. The Niger Delta region, located in the southern part of the country, is rich in oil and other natural resources, but it is also economically challenged because of the consequences of oil exploration in the region. The Delta comprises nine of the thirty-six Nigerian states: Rivers, Edo, Abia, Cross River, Bayelsa, Akwa-Ibom, Delta, Imo, and Ondo. These states are inhabited by a variety of ethnic groups, including the Ijaws, Itsekiris, Urhobos, Ikwerres, Efik, Ibibio, Isokos, Igbos, and Yor b s. Their communities, from which this oil comes, are suffering from environmental degradation and poor living conditions. In other words, they see none of the wealth that their land generates. Thus, despite the diversity of the ethnic groups of the Niger Delta, they share one unifying factor: oil. Wherever you go in the Niger Delta, oil is always a central concern. Oil unifies communities as much as it creates a wedge within them. I found that oil creates unity when it comes to making claims of ownership; it is when the discussion turns to who should derive benefits from the oil that the wedge appears.
In deciding where to begin my study of the Niger Delta, I became interested in where those unifying factors and wedges are most prominent. Thus, all of my ethnographic examples come from the Niger Delta states of Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa, and Ondo. These four states account for the majority of the oil that the Delta is noted for and, unsurprisingly, they are also hotbeds of militancy, as well as the sites of many environmental nongovernmental organizations ( NGO s) and of the operational headquarters of many of the oil corporations in Nigeria. Ondo State is unique because it is the only Yor b -speaking state included in what I describe as the economic Niger Delta, while Bayelsa State is the only one in which the Ijaws constitute the majority ethnic group. This book reflects my many years of engagement with the people and organizations of Nigeria.
THE EVOLUTION OF THIS BOOK
This research was inspired by my interest in environmental issues, social justice, and community engagement with oil corporations. As an undergraduate at what was then Ondo State University in the city of Ado Ekiti, majoring in philosophy, I became interested in the intellectual tradition of Marxism-Leninism and later campaigned against military regimes and the unacceptable practices of multinational corporations. I also participated in programs aimed at bringing about democratic change not only in Nigeria but also in southern Africa, which at the time was embroiled in struggles against apartheid and foreign rule. Upon graduating from college, my fellow activists and I found ourselves confronting a sudden change in the world order that privileged Western modernity over what we considered to be an alternative model for organizing society: socialism. This change in world order was signaled by the emergence of NGO s.
After graduating from college in 1992, I did my compulsory national youth service in the city of Port Harcourt. My national youth service, ordinarily a service to the nation-state, became a service to the peoples of the nation-state. I worked alongside many activists in the Niger Delta, including Chris Akani, Oronto Douglas, Ledum Mitee, Anyakwee Nsirimovu, Uche Onyeagocha, Isaac Osuoka, Azibaola Roberts, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Agnes Shaaba, Felix Tuodolor, and the late Nelson Azibaolanari, to establish a human and environmental rights presence in the region. Ken Saro-Wiwa would later provide space in his office at 24 Aggrey Road, Port Harcourt, for the effort to integrate the struggles of the Niger Delta into the struggle of the Nigerian people. Prior to this period, activists in the Delta were usually current or former students and operated as individuals. (There were exceptions: Saro-Wiwa was president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People [ MOSOP ], and Nsirimovu, a former staff member of the Civil Liberties Organisation, was executive director of the Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.) My coming to Port Harcourt, therefore, was seen by many as an opportunity to fortify the activists base. A few months after my arrival, on June 12, 1993, elections were conducted that were later annulled by the military, and this annulment provided a platform on which we could organize against the state. My involvement with the activist community in the Niger Delta would later provide a useful entry point for my graduate research in the area.
After my national youth service, I worked for the Civil Liberties Organisation, the first human rights group in Nigeria, as its national and international expansion officer. I rose rapidly within the organization, becoming the head of the human rights education project and, on several occasions, acting as the executive director. I moved from organizing branches and recruiting members to developing training programs for various strata of Nigerian society. However, I soon realized that becoming an NGO technocrat was no part of the ideal for which I had struggled. I was searching for answers to questions of social justice, particularly the environmental degradation suffered by many communities where corporations exploit natural resources.
The Nigerian military held power from December 31, 1983, to May 29, 1999, and during this time atrocities were perpetrated against the civilian population, many activists were unjustly imprisoned, and people were disappeared, exiled, and killed. Many NGO s changed their rhetoric to focus on issues of transitional justice in Nigeria, grappling with the atrocities committed by the military and its collaborators. With the end of the Cold War and of apartheid in South Africa, and the need to find ways of dealing with atrocities perpetrated by authoritarian regimes, truth and reconciliation commissions ( TRC s), which have their roots in the Judeo-Christian ethos, multiplied. Many anthropologists became interested in how countries as varied as South Africa, Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador created TRC s in attempts to deal with the past. The works of anthropologists such as Elizabeth Jelin (on issues of memory at the intersection of rights claims) and Richard Wilson (on South Africa s TRC ) stand out. Anthropologists and others also concentrated on issues of human rights and humanitarianism, and on the role that NGO s play in shaping new articulations of rights rhetoric. Landmark works in this field include Jean and John Comaroff s work on southern Africa, Daniel Jordan Smith s work on Nigeria, Kamari Clarke s study of the international criminal court, Annelise Riles s examination of the human rights network, and Sally Engle Merry s studies of gender and human rights.
While much of this scholarship shapes my understanding of the relationship between human rights and the emergent neoliberal world order that continues to structure global economic and political relationships, it was most especially the pioneering work of Fernando Coronil on how oil transforms the state into a magical entity that drew my attention to how oil can interact with human and environmental rights language. When Coronil s The Magical State was published in 1997, many anthropologists were still interested in the state s role in shaping cultural interpretations. Andrew Apter and Suzana Sawyer followed Coronil s example by mapping the importance of oil wealth to nation-states in creating particular cultural practices. The work of Andrew Apter, in particular, followed Karin Barber s model in studying the politics of oil and its relationship to the production of popular culture in Niger