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

Dr. Esekumemu V. Clark
exploration and exploitation by failing to introduce, change and use
new materials, i.e. flowlines. However, they continue to use, among
others oil pipelines which are more than thirty years old. This is one
of the main reasons why the oil pollution is more frequent in the Niger
Delta (see e.g. Frynas 1998; Frynas 2000). Consequently, the
Nigerian authorities had failed to demand that the oil companies in
their oil exploration and production activities must maintain and
observe existing norms of international standards such as in oil
operations in Europe and North America. Why has the Nigerian state
behaved in such a way Correspondingly, there are three answers 1[11]
to the question:
1 the urge to earning hard currency by the leadership and the
possibility open for looting, for example, over US$ 12 bn from
the Gulf War windfall was unaccounted for under
the
Babangida regime;
2 partnership with Shell as such endorsing its actions regarding
failure to meet international legal environmental standards; and
3 the lack of concern about the depletion rate of oil mineral
resources compared to most other oil-producing countries
where stark measures are in place to prevent depletion of oil
resources, per se.
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