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

Dr. Esekumemu V. Clark
deploy security forces to root-out the youths from the oil installations
enabling the oil corporations to continue operating. Thus, in the
process of the security forces trying to dislodge those armed youths,
causalities were sustained by both sides.
The leadership has also used tactics such as divide-and-rule
politics, i.e. pitting two or more ethnic groups or towns against each
other in order to weaken their bargaining position vis-à-vis the
government. A most recent example of this occurred between the
Ijaws and Itsekiris over the local government headquarters of Warri
South West that from the very beginning had been located at Ogbe-
Ijoh an Ijaw-town. These headquarters moved later to Ogidegben, an
Itsekiri-town for no apparent reason, with the support of the military
government. The problem led to a bitter conflict between the Ijaws
and Itsekiris, many people were killed and properties worth millions of
dollars were destroyed. Despite the gravity of the situation, the
military leadership had failed to take a constructive approach to
resolve it peacefully.
The underlying rationale as to why the
leadership hesitated to act on putting an end to the ethnic clashes
was to keep the conflict simmering so that the attention of the local
communities will be detracted from the most contentious issues of oil
revenues, development and environmental degradation severely
affecting the Niger Delta. However, the issue of the headquarters had
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