OIL AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CONFLICTS IN THE NIGER DELTA REGION OF NIGERIA

Abstract

The activities that are involved in oil exploration and production in Nigeria have brought about both an increase in wealth to the country and negative environmental consequences to the Niger Delta area. Over the years, the Nigerian state has been struggling to take advantage of the country’s huge wealth from petroleum in order to address the challenges of development in the country. Materials for the study are sourced from secondary data and are subjected to textual analysis. Theoretically, Marxist class analysis is adopted. It is the issues of poverty and lack of infrastructures in the oil producing areas that engender the political problem of resource control in Nigeria. The politics of resource allocation basically arose from the issue of how to share the revenue accruing from oil resources. Accordingly, the paper interrogates the interface between revenue sharing formulae in Nigeria, the prevalence of environmental degradation in the Niger Delta and the emergence of agitations by the militant groups often associated with violent attacks on oil companies and their installations. On this basis, the paper underlines the political and economic issues that are involved in the distribution of oil wealth in Nigeria and how it affects the masses in the Niger Delta. To ginger lasting solution to the crisis in the Niger Delta, the paper points to the need for the Nigerian government to ensure that necessary measures are put in place to take care of environmental degradation, and in addition recommends that the fundamental issues of fairness and equity be put into consideration in the distribution of economic resources, not only to the people in the Niger Delta but to all the Nigeria citizens.