Page 1 of 22

Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 11

Publication Date: November 25, 2022

DOI:10.14738/assrj.911.13291. Chidiobi, O. C., & Ibekwe J. C. (2022). Oil Exploitation, Environmental Issues and Resource Curse in a Post-Colonial Niger Delta

Region of Nigeria: The Unending Search for Peace, 1960-2009. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(11). 373-394.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Oil Exploitation, Environmental Issues and Resource Curse in a

Post-Colonial Niger Delta Region of Nigeria: The Unending Search

for Peace, 1960-2009

Chidiobi, Okechukwu Christian

Department of General Studies, Federal Polytechnic Ohodo

Enugu state, Nigeria

Juliet Chinenye Ibekwe

Department of Urban and Regional Planning

Faculty of Environmental sciences, University of Nigeria Nnsuka (UNN)

Enugu Campus, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

The issues surrounding the conflict in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria can never be

over-flogged. It is no doubt that so much have been written in this regard, with each

paper proffering a possible solution or adding to the numerous suggestions and

recommendations already on ground. In spite of these however, the quest for peace

has remained elusive or unending because the government and her counterpart

multinational oil companies seem not to have really made a genuine or sincere

efforts in addressing the myriad of teething issues that have generated conflict in

the region ever since the discovery and exploitation of oil. There is therefore the

need for a lasting peace and permanent solutions to all the areas of conflicts. If not

the situation of the region shall continue to attract comments from scholars,

relevant authorities, public affairs commentators, social analysts and concerned or

interested opinions. It is thus on this note that this paper comes in handy as modest

but useful contribution of the authors to the litany of extant literatures on the

lingering conflicts in the region. It is worthy of note that the post-colonial Niger

Delta region has never known peace ever since the oil exploitation began in

commercial quantity in 1950. The Hobbesian state has almost become the order of

the day. Despite the fact that over 90% of the country’s revenue (GDP) is being

generated by oil exploitation from the region, the greater majority of the people are

still languishing in squalor, in addition to large scale unemployment as well as lack

of basic life infrastructural facilities. These obvious denials in the midst of

abundance resources coupled with environmental related issues of degradations

have been fundamental causes of conflict between the people and the government

on one hand, and between the people and the oil extracting companies on the other

hand. In view of this ugly development, it is therefore apparent that the gift of oil is

now more like a curse than the earlier perceived blessings to the people ofthe Niger

Delta. This study thus examined all the series of failed efforts made by Nigerian

government to broker a lasting peace in the region starting from 1960 when the

Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB) was established through the

recommendation of Sir Willinik Commision of 1957, down to the “Amnesty

Program” granted by late president Umar Musa Yar’Adua’s administration in 2009

which led to a large number of the militants numbering 26,808 surrendering their

Page 2 of 22

374

Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 9, Issue 11, November-2022

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

arms to the government in return for technical training and monthly payment of

stipends. In spite of the temporal reprieve, there was a resurgence of new militants

groups in 2016 seven years down the line. Thus, there is yet to be a definite solution

to the conflict in the region as there are still clamour for resource control and

occasional threats of militancy activities. In view of this, this paper in addition to

many other suggestions already on ground in this respect, also made a number of

some useful recommendations that if adopted can bring about lasting peace in the

Niger-Delta region.

Functional Words: Oil Exploitation, Environment, Peace-Conflict, Niger-Delta-Region

and Nigeria.

INTRODUCTION

Towards the end of the twentieth century (20thC), the discipline of international relations (IR)

witnessed an emergence of disciplinary diversification. The realist state-centric model and the

liberal approach which were the major theories at that time became inadequate to expound the

myriad of the global issues in the discipline. As the traditional theories (Realism and Idealism)

witnessed this trend, emphasis shifted to other seminal and topical areas like: feminism or

gender studies; environmental studies or ecology; behaviouralism and other emergent fields

within the discipline. Among these pertinent challenges confronting the world at that time,

were the environmental related issues which were at the front burner of international

discourse.

Today, the environmental concerns remains one of the major focuses of national and

international contemporary scholarship and the trend is bound to persist far into the future.

This is because of inextricable relationship between man and his environment as well as the

unpleasant connection/nexus between environment, peace and conflict... (Phil-Eze, 2009:389).

It is perhaps believed that the increased concern for the protection and preservation of the

environment is partly due to the sudden realization of the grave danger posed to the future of

our globes by human activities. Thus, if the environment is not preserved, it can become

uninhabitable thereby making it impossible for humans continued existence. According to

Orange (2013;117), this increased danger of global destruction by human activities have

manifested in several environmental disasters... This disastrous consequences of man’s

legitimate and most times reckless or negligence attitudes against our world have been

identified by Okonkwo and Eboatu (1999:iv) to include “acid rain, ozone layer depletion,

deforestation & desertification, toxic chemicals, and so on” .Others are excessive rainfall

pattern, high insulation/radiation, health hazards, environmental pollution, burning, to name

but a few

The coming of green scholarship (green revolution) however did a lot to transform man’s

thinking, orientation and attitudes towards his environment. The need for man to improve his

environment thus garnered and attracted more academic acceptance–hence the unbridled

quest for biodiversity. This development has also led to a number of world summit, conference

and session on the environment in the recent years. In the words of Enuka (2019), “in the

concerted bid to rid the globe of environmental dangers and insecurity, there had been

international environmental conferences, international environmental organizations and the

rest”. And these included Stockholm conference 1972; the Nairobi Declaration 1982; the

Page 3 of 22

375

Chidiobi, O. C., & Ibekwe J. C. (2022). Oil Exploitation, Environmental Issues and Resource Curse in a Post-Colonial Niger Delta Region of Nigeria:

The Unending Search for Peace, 1960-2009. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(11). 373-394.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.911.13291

Montreal Conference, Canada 1987; The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1992; a Special

Session of the United Nations General Assembly held from 23-28 June 1997 in New York; the

Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development held in 2002. There were also the

Kyoto protocol 1997 and the then Copenhagen conference held in Denmark, between 7th -

19thDecember, 2009. With all these conscious efforts towards combating the menace, the study

of environment has seen a lot of breakthroughs, and within the context of global theorizing in

international relations (IR), its discourse dominates debates among IR scholars.

Similarly, man’s activity (friendly and unfriendly) towards the environment attracted

particular attention. For man’s quest to conquer his environment for survival, his toil to make

out a living or livelihood in his neighborhood occasioned unsustainable outcomes at the

expense of scientific and technological innovation. Today, the environmental challenges

bedeviling and plaguing Niger Delta region of Nigeria is of much serious global-environmental

concern as it is to Nigeria. It is an example of environmental hazards and seriously so. The

discovery of oil since the 1950’s and its subsequent exploration within that environmental

region Niger-Delta has amounted to no less serious puzzle and conundrum for the Nigerian

state on one hand and then to scholars of conflict resolution at the other hand. The

unwholesome activities of major or all the multinational oil companies (MNC’s) have provoked

a cocktail of violence, militant activities and what is more, parallel militant pressure groups

such as the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), the Movement for the Emancipation

of the Niger Delta (MEND), the Niger Delta Greek Warriors (NDGW), Redemption Fighters

Coalition Group (RFCG), Niger Delta Republic Seekers (NDRS), Adaka-Boro Avengers (ABV)

and several other groups have sprung up in such manner that Hobbesian State seems to be the

order of the day or better still, the norm rather than exception. Thus it is suffice to say that oil

exploitation in the Niger Delta region has for a very long time now led to environmental related

issues like ecological degradation, oil spillage, social disconnection, destruction of peoples’

means of livelihood, health related hazards and so forth. There have also been cases of

marginalization, alarming unemployment, lack of basic social amenities / infrastructure as well

as repressive, suppressive and oppressive constitutional and legal framework which makes the

demand for change in the status quo or resource control by the people almost impossible. The

consequences of all the above challenges is the environmental conflict which has manifested in

forms of political, social, economic, ethnic, religious and territorial conflicts as we have seen it

in the region today. Nwosu (2009:548) aptly captured the problem when he stated that, “the

problems of the people of the Niger Delta are traceable to economic deprivation, oil exploration

and production activities that impact negatively on the lives of the people. Similarly, Okorie

(2018:5-11) noted that:

The current wave of conflict... is a means of alerting the world of the many years of

injustice, exploitation, marginalization and underdevelopment of the Niger Delta

Region. According to him, the apparent negligence and underdevelopment of the

region have always been explained with limp reasons. The oil companies claim not

to be responsible by virtue of the fact that they work for Nigeria government and

as a matter of fact pay royalty to the government. The federal government on its

own blames the ministries constituted by it for inability to tackle the problems of

the region while the ministries on the other hand, blame youths for disrupting

projects.