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Citizenship and Resource Control in Nigeria: the Case of Minority Communities in the Niger Delta Dibua, J.I

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Citizenship and Resource Control in Nigeria: the Case of Minority Communities in the Niger Delta Dibua, J.I www.ssoar.info Citizenship and resource control in Nigeria: the case of minority communities in the Niger Delta Dibua, J.I. Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Zur Verfügung gestellt in Kooperation mit / provided in cooperation with: GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Dibua, J. (2005). Citizenship and resource control in Nigeria: the case of minority communities in the Niger Delta. Afrika Spectrum, 40(1), 5-28. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-106645 Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz This document is made available under a CC BY-NC-ND Licence (Namensnennung-Nicht-kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung) zur (Attribution-Non Comercial-NoDerivatives). For more Information Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden see: Sie hier: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.de afrika spectrum 39 (2005)1 : 5 - 28 © 2005 Institut für Afrika-Kunde, Hamburg J. I. Dibua Citizenship and resource control in Nigeria: the case of minority communities in the Niger Delta1 Abstract The struggle for resource control by communities in the oil-producing areas in the Niger Delta assumed a central position in the discourse on the na- tional question, ethnic minority politics and environmental degradation in Nigeria from the early 1990s. This is largely due to the activities of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) that greatly helped to popularise and internationalise the issue. Available scholarly work has concentrated on ethnic minority politics, the restructuring of Nigeria’s federalism and environmental degradation. However, little effort has been made to interrogate the significance and im- plications of the resource control issue for the citizenship rights of Nigeri- ans, in particular, the people of the oil-producing communities. The mar- ginalisation of the citizenship rights of the minority oil-producing commu- nities helped to fuel the resort to ethnic citizenship rights agitation as the basis for resource control. This paper states that the operation of a true fed- eralism in Nigeria has to be accompanied by meaningful devolution of power at the local level, to ensure that the common people have better con- trol over the wealth derived from their natural resources. Keywords Nigeria, Niger Delta, crude oil, resource control, federalism, ethnic minorities, so- cial exclusion, civil and political rights, protest movements, civil society, Ogoni Introduction he dispute over resource control between the six South-South states of the T Niger Delta (Akwa-Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo and Rivers states), and the federal government of Nigeria has once again helped to bring into sharp focus this salient aspect of the national question in Nigeria. The issue of resource control has been an important aspect of Nigeria’s political 1 The author acknowledges the helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers and the editors of Afrika Spectrum, on the first draft of this paper. 6 J. I. Dibua economy from the colonial period particularly with the introduction of a lop- sided federal system of government in the 1950s, which intensified the roles of regionalism and ethnicity in the country’s politics. However, the issue as- sumed a more prominent role in the 1990s. This is due mainly to the sustained struggle by the Niger Delta oil-producing communities, more prominently exemplified by the Ogoni struggle under the auspices of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). Under the leadership of the dy- namic and charismatic writer and activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, MOSOP helped to popularise and internationalise the resource control controversy (Saro-Wiwa, 1992; UNPO, 1995; Apter, 1998, MacIntyre 1996). The context for this struggle for resource control was provided by the wanton neglect of the oil-producing communities from whose territories the bulk of Nigeria’s revenue is derived (Etim et. al., 2001; Sesebo & Ollor-Obari, 2001). This has been accentuated by the perceived marginalisation of the citi- zenship rights of the people of these communities, mainly because they be- long to ethnic minority groups. Nevertheless, two broad levels of the struggle can be identified, namely, the governmental level and the non-governmental level. The non-governmental level includes pan-Niger Delta groups, ethnic and communal mass-based associations, youth groups and environmental activist groups. In virtually all the cases, the struggle has been cast in the form of citizenship rights. However, the different groups involved in the struggle for resource control reveal some form of contradictions and tendencies in the movement. Many of the mass-based ethnic and communal movements and some of the youth groups, are largely motivated by the marginalisation of the citizenship rights of their people in terms of the use and control of the resources located in their land. The same cannot be said of the state-led agitation. Given the activities and orientation of the state governors since they assumed office in the fourth republic, it can be argued that they are more interested in resource control for the sake of patronage activities and primitive accumulation rather than the citizenship rights of their people (Odunlami, 2004; Oguntimehin, 2004). Similarly, part of the leadership of the mainly elitist pan-Niger Delta movements are in cohort with the federal government and are, therefore, accomplices in the exploitation of their people. They nevertheless want to be relevant at the local scene and retain the loyalty of their people by posing as champions of the agitation for resource control and the attendant citizenship rights. For some people therefore, the agitation has become a form of oppor- tunism to be used to embark on self-serving and self-aggrandising move- ments. All these help to demonstrate the complex nature of the controversy. Although the agitation of the minority oil-producing communities has helped to popularise the resource control controversy, there are more dimen- sions to the controversy. The issue of indigeneity as enshrined in successive Nigerian constitutions, promoted the emergence of natives and non-natives in various Nigerian communities. This has been a source of conflict over re- 7 Citizenship and resource control in Nigeria source control. No matter how long a person from an ethnic group, commu- nity or state has lived in another ethnic group, community or state and regu- larly fulfilled his or her civic obligations, the person remains a stranger. Such a person is not entitled to the same citizenship rights as members of the host ethnic group. Some of the recent inter-communal urban conflicts over market rights, for instance the conflicts between Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani traders in Lagos and Ibadan, are partly attributable to this distinction between natives and non-natives. Also some conflicts between communities in neighboring states, and between communities within a specific state, over farming and grazing lands, for instance, are in actuality struggle over resource control. Another dimension of the struggle is that of communities that have been dis- possessed of their vital resources by government policies, as was the case with the Bakolori crisis in 1980. The crisis was engendered by the massive land alienation and adverse environmental impact of the Bakolori irrigation scheme (Oculi, 1982). In any case, this paper will concentrate on the struggle for resource con- trol by the Niger Delta oil-producing communities. It will, however, be neces- sary to first of all operationalise the concept of citizenship. This will not in- volve a detailed discussion of the genesis, evolution and contending perspec- tives on citizenship: rather it will attempt to clarify the context within which the term citizenship is used in this paper. The problematic of citizenship Citizenship as used in modern Nigeria is defined in the Western sense. It essentially entails the transplanting of the Western attributes of citizenship as they were transformed by the liberal and bourgeois European revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries, into Africa. The Rousseaunian concept of citizen- ship as a social contract between individuals and the state entailing the rights and duties of citizens as well as the liberal and bourgeois conception of indi- viduality, individual property rights, individual accumulation, and competi- tive relations, were reproduced in various post-colonial Nigerian constitu- tions. This negated the principles of collectivism, communalism and coopera- tion that constituted critical aspects of citizenship in pre-colonial African so- cieties and helped to provide social security for members of the communities. However, the multi-ethnic make up of Nigeria and the intra-bourgeois com- petition for offices and resources that characterise neo-colonial Nigeria, pro- duced the need for the promotion of bourgeois unity, misconstrued as na- tional unity, through a form of affirmative action. The federal character prin- ciple which was portrayed as helping to promote unity and protect citizen- ship rights by granting equal access to offices and resources to every Nigerian 8 J. I. Dibua irrespective of ethnic origin, was devised and enshrined in successive Nige- rian constitutions since 1979. However, by emphasizing indignity and therefore a person’s ethnicity as the basis for
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