The Political Economy of the Ogoni and the Agitation for Resource Control in the Niger-Delta, Nigeria

Abstract

In view of the recent political realities in Nigeria particularly as it pertains to change of government, there is the need to re-engage some of the fundamental challenges of Nigeria’s recent history. One of such challenges is that of agitation of the oil-bearing region, otherwise known as the Niger-Delta, for resource control. Such agitations in the past were driven to the extreme point of criminality such that it had forced the hands of government to set up an Amnesty Programme, which was meant to rehabilitate former warlords and their followers into decent life and living. It is in that context that this paper examined the trajectory of the Ogoni crisis, its effect on the contest over oil exploration and exploitation in the Niger-Delta, as well as on the revenue sharing formula based on the principle of derivation in Nigeria. It explored the dynamics and intricacies of the contest and concluded that the crisis, while exerting a lot of hardship on Ogoniland and its people, facilitated the negotiations that eventually resulted in the allocation of 13 percent derivation revenue to the oil bearing states of the Niger Delta.

Keywords: Resource control, Agitation, Derivation, exploration and exploitation