Oil and Conflict in the Niger Delta: A Reflection on the Politics of State Response to Armed Militancy in Nigeria

Abstract

The Niger Delta is currently in the vortex of protracted social conflict, as crisis of regime legitimacy, “political ostracism
and social marginalization” fuel armed rebellion with incalculable consequences for the stability of the Nigerian state. The root
cause of this crisis has been the subject of extensive debate in the literature (Otite, 1990; Bassey, etal, 2002). The current
dimension of the crisis is arguably the systemic resultant of the multiple disorders (intense “bureaucratic politics”) in the policy
process under the Obasanjo administration and that of his successor, Yar’ Adua –Jonathan, and the equal determination of
militant youth movements (MEND, NDV, etc.) to assert their presence in the region. This melodrama is currently played out in
the official circle of Nigeria’s Federal Government with the unmistakable paradigm shift of policy discourse from accommodation
and commitment to transformative action to the language of criminality, gangsterism, terrorism and force. While these
contending tendencies characterized bureaucratic debate in the Nigerian policy circles (with the military establishment pushing
for a “final solution” in line with the decisive action against Biafran secession), the military onslaught on the militant camps in the
Niger Delta in May 2009 marked a watershed in the praxis of state response through force. The implication is unmistakable: with
less sympathy for the struggle against “domestic colonialism in the region, the dominant mindset of the Yar’ Adua- Jonathan
administration (the “group think factor”) is committed to the Colombian or Zaireen style solution. How this dialectics of force and
resistance is played out will determine the future of Nigeria in the next decade: failed, collapsed or problem state?