Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria by Omolade Adunbi (review)

Omolade Adunbi's Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria shows how the desire of the people of the Niger Delta to benefit from the oil produced in their region is at the core of the political crisis that faces Nigeria and its oil industry. The dynamics of the crisis in Nigeria, especially in the delta, are largely centered on the occurrence of oil, the presence of multinational oil companies, antisocial and undesirable state policies, an array of distinct minority ethnic groups as the historical inhabitants of the region, and decisively, deficient socioeconomic development despite immense resource-based wealth.

According to Nigerian history, the origins of the crisis can be traced to the British colonial era, when British colonial leaders were unwilling to address issues of cohabitation by distinct religious groups and ethnic minorities within a single region. Nigeria since attaining independence, in 1960, has been marred by recurrent political crises, which have resulted in a dys-functional political and economic systems of governance, usually benefiting only the political elites in the county's bourgeois economic system.

To neglect the issues of minorities in policy development and implementation, one can rely on the text to argue that successive postindependence Nigerian administrations have effectively maintained the historical balance of power relations, which have undermined the status and ability of ethnic minorities to access resources in their respective areas. As this book shows, the delta crisis revolves around contestation by the ethnic communities of the region, the multinational oil companies, the federal government, and various social movements and militias that have emerged from the chaos.

Adunbi shows that the key to this chaos is a legal system that regulates the exploration of oil, land ownership, governance, ethnic conflict, natural resource control, and broader issues of ethnic self-determination. According to Adunbi, this bourgeois economy assumes a perfect market and profit maximization. In the end, he underscores the contradictions of resource extraction, especially in Africa, and the need for good governance, in which further commodification of society and market adjustment are seen as a panacea. His central claim is that land and oil represent an ancestral promise of wealth to many delta communities. This promise echoes throughout the region, and the oil pipelines, flow stations, and platforms have come to symbolize it; however, as readers learn from the book, the complex power dynamics that result from the struggle for bona fide ownership create dependencies and alliances among NGOs, militants, youth groups, the army, and corporations, which lead to a shifting alliance structure within the region.

The book is subdivided into seven chapters. Chapters one and two map Nigeria's development paradigm through the politics of oil, chartering the country's history from the discovery of the oil and its transformation from an agrarian economy to one that is highly dependent on oil. The author traces this transformation to the point that, by 1973, oil accounted for nearly 60 percent of total revenue and just over 80 percent of export earnings (p. 47).

As Nigeria celebrated fifty years of oil exploration, community members in the resource enclaves, including the delta, suffered the consequences of environmental degradation and denial of access to their land (p. 60). The inability of the nation to spread the wealth to all its citizens, coupled with the impact of structural adjustment polices that the international monetary banking systems forced upon the government after the fall in oil prices and the reduction in oil revenue, led to the emergence of radical and crusading NGOs and CBOs in the region.

Adunbi reveals ways in which social structures and norms are positioned as an essential and enduring phenomenon to the communities. For example, he provides a rich unpacking, whereby both the culture and national politics emerge as dynamic concepts over the region. Subsequent regimes in Nigeria were unable to address such basic provisions of social services as health care, education, water, energy, markets, roads, and other necessary infrastructure. The abdication of responsibilities by the different administrations gave room for NGOs...