PEACE AND RECONCILIATION IN THE NIGER DELTA
After more than 50 years of oil production and a current production capacity of 3 million barrels per day more than 80 percent of Nigeria’s population live on just $1 per day in the midst of a spreading conflict precipitated by the lust for power and wealth among the relatively few elite.
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Shifting Trends in Oil Theft in the Niger Delta.
Information Paper No. 3

Crude oil theft in the Niger Delta has shown an obvious and sustained decline in the last year. This fact alone would seem good news but there is much more to the story of oil theft in the Niger Delta. There has been a shift from the emphasis on militia assisted oil theft to ’official’ oil theft. With the approaching elections in Nigeria militia in the Niger Delta have become much more militant and have effectively closed down between 25 percent and, at its worst, 35 percent of Nigeria’s daily production of crude oil.
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Sabotage: Hostile Act, Desperate People
Few countries are immune to the ravages of politically-motivated violence, whether from terrorism, insurgency, criminal activities, ethnically-related instability, or sheer hatred. Historically, groups with hostility towards a government or the private sector have resorted to sabotage of oil facilities and pipelines in an effort to disrupt production, affect the economy, and destroy infrastructure. What motivates people to undertake such tactics varies.
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The Finance of Illicit Resource Extraction
The proceeds of illicit resource extraction, defined as the sale of natural resources by means that avoid the payment of taxes to the national government in the country from which the resources were extracted, or which is carried out in violation of resolutions issued by the United Nations, are laundered through the same financial services infrastructure relied on by drug traffickers, terrorists, and corrupt officials. The growing panoply of international initiatives targeting money laundering, terrorist finance, and corruption have yet to focus on money laundering relating to illicit resource extraction.
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Fingerprinting Oil. Information Paper No.2
“Fingerprinting” oil is a process that refers to analytical chemistry techniques by which crude oil is defined into its components in such a way as to permit the identification of a particular sample of crude oil by the uniqueness of its composition.
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Oil Theft in Nigeria – An Overview. Information Paper No.1
“Fingerprinting” oil is a process that refers to analytical chemistry techniques by which crude oil is defined into its components in such a way as to permit the identification of a particular sample of crude oil by the uniqueness of its composition.
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Focus on Communal Conflict
Since Olusegun Obasanjo was sworn in as president in May 1999, communal conflicts have increased in Nigeria in number and intensity, causing hundreds of deaths and displacing thousands.
The most common explanation provided to IRIN by analysts in Lagos and Port Harcourt is that the introduction of democracy has acted like the release of a pressure valve, enabling people to vent their pent-up anger and express themselves more freely.
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Strategic Conflict Assessment Nigeria
The study has focused sharply on the interaction between resource competition and the corruption of the political system. Out of the forty two years since Independence, Nigeria has experienced thirty years of military dictatorship and during this period political and social values have been deeply undermined. Since 1999 Nigeria has turned towards democracy but this does not mean that conflicts will dissolve or be resolved instantly. Instead the immediate effect of democracy, as the Phase Two report concludes, has been to generate more conflict- ‘Three years into democratic practice the intense competition for political space has heated up the polity leading to violence, which has continued to threaten the survival of the democratic process.’
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Synthesis Report - Appendix 13
A field team from the Corporate Engagement Project (CEP) visited Nigerias Niger Delta in March 2001 and April 2002 to examine the interaction between oil companies and the communities affected by their operations. CEP spoke with oil company representatives, international and national NGOs, human rights groups, lawyers, government officials, various oil-affected communities, and a range of other stakeholders concerned with the oil industry. The March 2002 visit took place at the invitation of the Centre for Social and Corporate Responsibility based in Port Harcourt but was independently conducted by a CEP team. The observations made in this case study cannot be attributed to any one specific oil company; it is a compilation of CEP’s observations of the oil industry in general.
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The Bakassi Boys
Vigilante violence and human rights abuses by vigilante groups have become increasingly serious problems in Nigeria in recent years. Despite repeated government promises to tackle crime and to reform and expand the police force, the rate of armed robbery and other violent crime in Nigeria remains extremely high. The public maintains a profound distrust of the police, who are seen as ineffective, corrupt and often complicit in crime. In various parts of the country, especially in the large cities, people have felt so frustrated and powerless in the face of the inability of the police to ensure security that they have taken the law into their own hands and formed vigilante groups. In some states, these vigilante groups have been officially endorsed by state governments, and have been used not only to fight crime, but also to target political opponents. They have been responsible for serious human rights abuses, including scores of summary executions, torture, and arbitrary detentions for extended periods.
Among the more notorious of these vigilante groups are the Bakassi Boys, active in several states in the south-east of Nigeria. Initially created by traders to fight rampant crime in the large market towns of Aba, in Abia State, then in Onitsha, in Anambra State, the Bakassi Boys have since extended their operations across other parts of Abia, Anambra, and Imo states, with the active support of state governments. In Anambra State, they have been legally recognized, through a special law adopted in August 2000. The methods the Bakassi Boys have used to carry out their “mission” have been extremely brutal, ruthless, and arbitrary. Scores of people have been extrajudicially executed or mutilated in public by the Bakassi Boys; hundreds of others have been tortured and detained in their “cells.” Few people appear to question the legality of their actions; large sections of the public, the media and some politicians have applauded them on the basis that they have “succeeded” in bringing down crime levels in the areas where they operate. Likewise, few people have challenged the Bakassi Boys’ claim that all those they target are known criminals; most have preferred to turn a blind eye to the fact that many of their victims may be innocent and that even those who are guilty have a basic right to due process.
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Bottom of the Barrel
CRS is committed to helping to ensure that Africa’s oil boom improves the lives of the poor through increased investment in education, health, water, roads, agriculture and other vital necessities. But for this to occur, these revenues must be well managed.
Thus, this report addresses two fundamental questions: How can Africa’s oil boom contribute to alleviating poverty? What policy changes should be implemented to promote the management and allocation of oil revenues in a way that will benefit ordinary Africans?
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Crackdown in the Niger Delta.
The Niger Delta has for some years been the site of major confrontations between the people who live there and the Nigerian government's security forces, resulting in extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions, and draconian restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. These violations of civil and political rights have been committed principally in response to protests about the activities of the multinational companies that produce Nigeria's oil and the use made of the oil revenue by the Nigerian government. Although the succession by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar as head of state in June 1998 brought a significant relaxation in the repression the late Gen. Sani Abacha inflicted on the Nigerian people, human rights abuses in the oil producing communities continue and the basic situation in the delta remains unchanged.
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Fuelling Poverty
The iconic image from the latest war in Iraq will undoubtedly be the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s 20ft statue in Paradise Square, on the day US marines arrived in Baghdad. But two other striking images from that conflict could have equally eloquent things to say about Iraq’s future. One is of British troops standing guard over the oil fields near Basra in the early hours of the war, while wells were burning. The other is of those same troops, days later, trying to keep order as they distributed meagre supplies of bottled water and other aid to a desperate population. The contrast between these two military exercises – in terms of resources, effort and planning – was startlingly clear. And the contrast is instructive, in a wider context, when considering the relationship between the world’s most sought-after natural resource and the people on whom it most directly impacts.
Put simply, when oil is involved the needs of ordinary people – such as the need for a secure supply of clean water – usually come a very distant second. Indeed, all available evidence indicates that the presence of oil in a developing country makes life worse, not better, for the people who live there – particularly the poorest people. That is what this report is about.
In global terms, it can be argued that oil and the oil economy are all but irrelevant to the world’s poorest people – the very people for whom Christian Aid seeks to speak – as they struggle to live their lives. They do not own cars, they often have no access to electricity and their fuel comes from animal dung or dwindling supplies of wood. Again, their greatest need is likely to be water. It can also be said that the global economy’s addiction to oil – its drug of choice – has done more.
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Nigeria. Vigilante violence in the south and south-east.
Three years after the election of a civilian government in May 1999, Nigerian citizens see themselves confronted with one of the most serious spirals of violence in decades, in the shape of increasing crime rate and inter-communal clashes.
Crime is probably perceived by the majority of the Nigerian population as the main problem in recent times. So much so that to a large degree human rights violations and abuses are “justified” in the context of a campaign of law enforcement against crime.
Nigeria lacks police officers. Police patrols often find themselves fighting against heavily armed gangs of robbers, who have killed dozens of police officers over the past three years. Working conditions in the police force are poor and allegations of human rights violations, corruption and misconduct within its ranks are numerous.
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Strategic Conflict Assessment of South-South Zone, Nigeria.
This Report of SCA phase two in-country field work focuses on conflict development and responses (by state actors, the civil society and the international community) in the six states of the South-South geo-political zone of Nigeria (Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta and Edo). The aim of the study as stated in the IPCR brief is “to reduce conflicts by affecting policy, promote peaceful co-existence and create a development-friendly and secure environment for all Nigerians.” The three conflict clusters studied exhibit extremely high degree of disruptive potentials and collateral damages. These are the Cross River-Akwa Ibom border conflict, the Eleme-Okrika conflict in Rivers State and the protracted social conflict in Warri. The decision to concentrate on three conflict clusters was determined both by time limitation and the threshold of its violent spectrum. By focusing on the analysis of their structures (situation, behaviour, attitudes and perceptions in terms of their complex and multi-dimensional inter-relationship), responses and recommendations of relevant actors, it is hoped that conflict sensitive strategies and relevant mitigating programmes will be generated and implemented. This effort is in line with the initiatives of the conflict assessment strategies of the three key development agencies: USAID, DFID and FEWER.
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The Niger Delta
When a civilian government was reinstated in Nigeria in 1999, many of those living in the Niger Delta region, the source of Nigeria’s oil wealth, hoped that a “democratic dividend” would end decades of neglect they had suffered under successive military regimes. From the early 1990s a cycle of protest and repression had led to the militarization of large parts of the delta, notably in Ogoniland, a small area of Rivers State where demonstrations leading to the closure of oil production had led to a five-year deployment of a special military taskforce to the area and the 1995 execution of nine minority rights leaders, including author and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. The situation has eased under the new government, and in particular Ogoniland is no longer occupied. But there is still widespread deployment of army, navy, and paramilitary Mobile Police at oil facilities across the delta. In November 1999, five months after the new government headed by President Olusegun Obasanjo took office, soldiers destroyed the town of Odi, in Bayelsa State, killing hundreds of people. Though the past three years have seen no incident of similar seriousness in the delta area, past human rights violations by the security forces have gone unpunished and new abuses related to oil production continue to be committed. Moreover, though vastly increased sums of money are flowing from the federal government to the delta region, under a new “derivation formula” that requires at least 13 percent of the oil revenue to be returned to the states where it is produced, ordinary people living in the delta see little if any benefit from these funds.
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The Price of Oil
This report is an exploration of human rights violations related to oil exploration and production in the Niger Delta, and of the role and responsibilities of the major multinational oil companies in respect of those violations. The Niger Delta has for some years been the site of major confrontations between the people who live there and the Nigerian government security forces, resulting in extra-judicial executions, arbitrary detentions, and draconian restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. These violations of civil and political rights have been committed principally in response to protests about the activities of the multinational companies that produce Nigeria’s oil. Although the June 1998 death of former head of state Gen. Sani Abacha and his succession by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar has brought a significant relaxation in the unprecedented repression General Abacha inflicted on the Nigerian people, and General Abubakar appears committed to ensuring the installation of an elected civilian government in May 1999, human rights abuses in the oil producing communities continue and the basic situation in the delta remains unchanged. As this report went to press, the fatal shooting by security forces of tens of youths demonstrating for the oil companies to withdraw from Nigeria was reported, and the deployment of large numbers of soldiers and navy to the delta to suppress such protests.
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Sustainable Development as a Strategy for Conflict Prevention
Globally, human existence seems to be at risk not only because of such social aberrations like mutual mistrust and hatred, insecurity, ethnic chauvinism, language differences, religious fanaticism, intra and interstate conflicts but also because of man's inability to predict, manage and control intending disorders. Conflicts of diverse forms have erupted in various parts of Nigeria and thus there is greater need for concerted efforts for conflict prevention.. For there to be long lasting peace, unity, harmony, love and progress in the oil-rich Niger Delta, it is identified that in addition to introducing a culture of peace and education, conflict mediation, international cooperation and post-conflict reconstruction, the sustainable development option is considered most appropriate. Therefore, to build confidence for the oppressed, marginalised and displaced people of the Niger Delta in the midst of poverty, hunger, deprivation, devastation, dehumanization, human right violations and socio-economic, political and cultural injustices, an understanding of the fundamentals of strategic sustainable development and conflict prevention and resolution should be a matter of concern by all interest groups. The sustainable development option should be one that would ensure sustainability and survivability of the society, both present and future, for which it is focussed at.
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