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

Samuel W. Ibodje and Fidelis Allen
Intergovernmental relations within the executive between the state
and federal governments between 1999 and now has intermittently
been conflictual. Matters over revenue distribution, especially over onshore/off-shore
dichotomy were decided by the judiciary when the
Federal executive went to court to challenge continuous claim of state
executives from the Niger Delta to revenues accruing from off-shore oil
extraction.
Decisions at the forum of federal and state executives also lack
transparency. The three major ethnic groups in Nigeria, Hausa-
Fulani, Ibos and Yorubas have the majority in the distribution of
states and local governments. They utilize that advantage in every
formal or informal gatherings of government representatives to push
forward their common interests against those of the minorities.
Expecting objective decisions free of ethnicity is therefore out of place.
At the level of state-local government intergovernmental relations , the
political class at the state executive contrive informal and formal
meetings essentially to map strategies of extracting party loyalty and
effective sharing of state resources. In Rivers State, serving state
executive members such as the commissioners, who may have
sponsored the election
of chairmen or appointment of local
government sole administrators in the case of pre-election local
government administration of 2003 extract money in return from
these chairman from monthly federal allocations. This is made easier
because of the constitutional status of the local governments as the
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