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

Chapter XI: Between the Politics of Oil Exploration and Exploitation, Oil
Producing Communities’ Reactions and Security Contradictions in the Niger Delta
the negative effects on the rural populations. Oil spillage and gas
flaring constitute the most serious forms of environmental
degradation in the Niger Delta, because they pose serious threat to
the livelihood of the oil-bearing communities. Oil spillage usually
inflict human, environmental, and socio-economic hardship on the
affected communities with long term or permanent damage to fish
farms, farmlands, soil and water (Gbadegesin, 1998). In the end, the
people of the region are left impoverished. This is where the people of
the region are challenged to react to do or die.
The attendant crisis then makes severe implications for the
security of the Nigerian state, the inhabitants of the region and their
property as well as the transnational capitalist exploiters (the multinationals
that carry out oil-exploration activities in the region). It is
against this backdrop that this paper sets out to discuss oil politics in
Nigeria and its implications for the uprising in the Niger Delta region,
the area that produces the oil in question and how the crisis poses
security challenge to both the Nigerian state and the inhabitants of
the Niger Delta region. Oil politics for this paper is defined as the
flexing of oil policy and legislation in relation to acquisition of land
and its use for oil exploration activities as well as the conflict over who
makes policies and determine who participates in the oil business, the
limit of participation and how the revenue from oil is to be shared,
when it is to be shared and to whom.
Objectives of the paper
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