Horror in Paradise: frameworks for understanding the crisis of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria ed. by Christopher Lamonica and J. Shola Omotola (review)

Two major historical events have combined to shape the global cultural imagination of the Niger Delta. The first was the murder of Ken Saro Wiwa, the Ogoni environmental activist and internationally renowned writer, by the military regime of General Sani Abacha in November 1995. Saro Wiwa’s death triggered worldwide uproar, fuelled mostly by the international community. Then, between 2005 and 2009, the violent eruption of almost 50,000 armed youth against the Nigerian state and multinational oil corporations operating in the region shook the global oil market to its foundations. Since then, world leaders and global institutions such as the UN have paid lip service to the need for democratization and development. Even so, the wealth of the Niger Delta continues to contrast sickeningly with the poverty of its people. Boyloaf, one of the leading commanders of the armed youth movement in the Delta between 2005 and 2009, succinctly observed that Nigeria is a country where those who have no idea what the Niger Delta creeks look like own oil blocks there, while those who live, work and die in the creeks do not know what oil blocks look like.

The corporate fortunes of the international oil industry and the rent-seeking interests of the postcolonial Nigerian state dominate any considerations for the welfare of the over 33 million people living in the region. Their daily experiences are at the heart of the recent book of essays edited by Christopher LaMonica and Shola Omotola, and published by Carolina Academic Press, the activist imprint run by the doyen of Nigerian Studies, Toyin Falola. The book frames the crisis in the Niger Delta around ‘a battle between largely external oil interests and those within the region who want to protect the local environment and way of life’ (p. 5). The Delta region is therefore a place ‘in acute crisis’, and one of the core objectives of the book ‘is to help inform the world of this basic fact’ (p. xv). In spite of the relative peace and quiet in the region since Goodluck Jonathan became Nigeria’s first president from the Niger Delta, Horror in Paradise reminds us that the suffering of the people there has not yet ended.

Horror in Paradise is unique for a number of reasons. First, it offers us new insights into the Delta area, mostly from scholars who live and work in Nigeria. Anyone familiar with the literature on the Niger Delta knows that, while the field has blossomed in the past decade or so, it has featured few voices of scholars who live, teach and research in Nigeria. In a sense, Niger Delta studies have been dominated by outside voices, mostly academics or journalists based in North America and the United Kingdom who jet into Nigeria, do research for two weeks or more, and return to their bases abroad. This is not a bad thing in and of itself: the Niger Delta has gained a lot from the interventions of these scholars and commentators. But the danger with this scholarly pattern is that, at some point, one begins to read signs of hasty conclusions and inadvertent condescension. Therefore, part of the uniqueness and allure of Horror in Paradise is that fourteen of its seventeen chapters were produced by local scholars who thus have the chance to join in the global discussion about events in their own backyard.

Divided into four different segments that address diverse issues in the Delta region, such as environment, culture, gender, governance, development, security and the amnesty programme, the book is shaped by a discourse of horror. The editors conceive of horror, interestingly, ‘as the seemingly willful betrayals of the golden opportunity that the discovery of oil and exploitation of oil resources harbour for the development of the Niger Delta and Nigeria generally’ (p...