The marginalized violent internal conflict (MVIC) model and the Ogoni conflict in the Niger Delta of Nigeria

The Ogoni people, and later other ethnic minority groups m the Niger Delta, embarked on violent resistance against environmental pollution and degradation occasioned by the unclean energy operations of oil transnational corporations, notably Shell, in the 1990s. Several explanations have been adduced for the outbreak of hostilities and the motives of the insurrectional I eaders. Little, however, has been done in terms of efforts geared at understanding the nature of the conflict through the application of conflict models and typologies and the comparative study of the Niger Delta conflicts with the contentious politics of other aggrieved and marginalized peoples e Isewhere in Nigeria and places like Liberia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone. The immediate consequence of little comparative analyses of conflicts in Africa provide room for misinterpretations, such as that of Robert Kaplan who sees the African youths as loose molecules , and the I abeling of insunectionists as trouble-makers by the ruling elites. Such definition has given State authorities latitude to employ greater violence against civilian populations. As these developments unfold, poverty, politico-economic instability and insecurity of life assumes frightening proportions in Africa. As an effort to fill the gap, the study attempts to apply the Marginalized Violent Internal conflict ( MVIC) mode!, developed by Dan T schirgi ( 1999) to the Ogoni conflict with a view to ascertaining whether it was a case of MVIC, and thus typologizing it. Tschirgi conceptualized the model upon investigation of the conflicts involving the Gamaa Al Islamiyya in Egypt and the Zapatistas in Mexico. He argued that though both conflicts appeared different, in reality, they were generically similar. Is the Ogoni conflict similar to the Middle Eastern and Latin American cases? Among the positive outcomes of an attempt to apply the MVIC to the Ogoni situation is the demonstration of certain widely held explanations of conflicts in the Niger Delta as unsatisfactory, and the provision of a research basis for further comparison, and typology of conflicts in Nigeria and the developing world