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
region within the context of the Nigerian state. In this paper the place
called the Niger Delta is identified. The activities of the oil industry in
the region as evidences have shown, have elicited crisis between the
host communities and the oil multinationals across time; thereby
rendering the Niger Delta region fragile and volatile. The agitations or
struggles by the people of the region for a better deal have been
observed to have grown to the point of escalation, and thus causing
grave security concern to the region, the multinationals and the
Nigerian state in general. The escalation has pushed the Nigerian
government to adopt approaches ranging from dialogue, to force as
evidenced in the current crisis in the region. But there appears to be
adamancy on the part of both the irate youths (militants) in the region
and the Nigerian government to give up violent approaches in
resolving the issue on ground. It is the argument of this paper that
the problem of the Niger Delta has been clearly and various stated;
but successive Nigerian governments have shown insensitivity and
insensibility to the plight of the people of the region. Successive
governments in Nigeria have continually been avoiding the real issue
on ground and pretending to be drawing master plans that they have
no honest intention to implement for visible, social, economic and
structural development of the region. It is also argued that
government has attempted to only give mere palliatives to the region
once there was one form of agitation or the other.
292