Nigeria’s Niger Delta: Understanding the Complex Drivers of Violent Oil-related Conflict

This paper explores the complex roots and dimensions of the NigerDelta conflict which has escalated from ethnic minority protests againstthe federal Nigerian State-Oil Multinationals’ alliance in the 1990’s tothe current insurgency that has attracted worldwide attention. It alsoraises some conceptual issues drawn from ‘snapshots’ taken fromvarious perspectives in grappling with the complex roots of the oilrelatedconflict in the paradoxically oil-rich but impoverished region asan important step in a nuanced reading of the local, national andinternational ramifications of the conflict and its implications for Nigeria’sdevelopment. The conflict is then located both in the struggle of ethnicminority groups for local autonomy and the control of their naturalresources (including oil), and the contradictions spawned by thetransnational production of oil in the region. The transition fromresistance – as-protest – to insurgency, as represented by attacks onstate and oil company targets by the Movement for the Emancipationof the Niger Delta (MEND), is also critically analyzed