Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Dr. William Ehwarieme
The paradoxes of the Niger Delta which accounts for upwards of 80
per cent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings and about 70 per cent
of government revenues have also been well established by the facts
that:
Life expectancy is falling in an age of blockbuster oil prices. Energy
availability is poor in a region that provides one-fifth of the energy
needs of the United States. The delta needs to import fuel despite
producing over two million barrels of crude oil per day. There is an
almost total lack of roads in a region whose wealth is funding gigantic
infrastructural development in other parts of Nigeria and expensive
peacekeeping activities in other parts of Africa. (UNDP, 2006:25).
In fact, the Niger Delta has been aptly described as “a region suffering
from administrative neglect, crumbling social infrastructure and
services, high unemployment, social deprivation, abject poverty, filth
and squalor, and endemic conflict”. (UNDP, 2006:25).
It is in the process of reacting to the foregoing conditions that
the Niger Delta has become a region at war with itself, the oil MNCs
and the Nigerian State and it is within this context that kidnapping
has emerged both as a political weapon and a means of economic
survival. This stage was not arrived at by sudden flight. Just before
independence, the people presented their fears to the colonial
government, demanding a state of their own but it was thought that
the creation of the NDDB was the solution to the development
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