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

Chapter II: The Niger Delta Crisis: The Political Economy of Fossil Fuels in
Nigeria
Africa on the one hand, it was also accused of making blood money by
the civil societies in the western world and some African states. For
instance in December 1995, the African National Congress (ANC)
organised a boycott of Shell service stations in South Africa, but with
no success. It was countered by aggressive advertisement in Southern
African newspapers between November 1995 and March 1996. This
was coupled with a campaign to raise awareness about Shell’s
philanthropic development projects. The advertisement disproved the
involvement of Shell in the killing of the environmentalists, and
stressed that Shell Nigeria PLC was not to be regarded in the same
way as Shell in South Africa. It emphasized that the killings were an
internal affair of Nigeria, and had been carried out by the Abacha’s
government without consultation with South Africa’s Shell Petroleum
(Inegbedion, 1997: 207).
The military and the civilian governments after the death of Ken Saro
Wiwa were of the view that the crises in the oil producing region
would be abated as a result of the total clamp down on the MOSOP.
Instead, new wave of insurrection erupted because of the
unsustainable policies of the national government and the oil MNCs’
parochial un-holistic approach to the environmental and
unemployment problems in the area. Politics of ransom cost crept into
the history of oil production in Nigeria. The oil MNCs and their OSCs
realised that the rate of kidnapping was on the increase because of
the restive ambition of the youths who believed that the only language
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