Christian Churches and Nigeria's Political Economy of Oil and Conflict
Christian Churches and Nigeria's Political Economy of Oil and Conflict

Author: Nkem Emerald Osuigwe

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-09-18

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1443867098

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The received account on African evangelical Christianity regarding social witness in a section of Western scholarship is that it is anti-development and a-political. Such an account heavily draws from an instrumentalist and functionalist assessment of such Christianity without recourse to its emic perspective. Using the case-study method, this book presents an ethnographic examination of this functionalist reading by investigating, describing and analysing evangelical Christian theological and socio-political consciousness within the context of oil and conflict in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. Adopting approaches from practical theology, congregational studies, and anthropology of religion, the author challenges such a reading using data gathered from three congregations in the region. His discourse revolves around answers to the following four critical questions: • What are the underlying theological issues and beliefs of Nigerian evangelical Christians within the context of oil and conflict? • What is their prevalent praxis within the context of Nigeria’s political economy of oil and conflict? •How accurate is the received account that African evangelical and ‘fundamentalist’ Christianity lacks social responsibility and is a-political and anti-development? • What would a contextual political theology for Nigeria’s political economy of oil look like? The theological issues are varied and the prevalent praxis nuanced, which then serves as a veritable critique of the claim that African evangelical Christianity lacks social responsibility due to its preoccupation with soul-winning. Whereas such Christianity places much emphasis on the winning of souls as an expression of its spirituality, it is neither oblivious nor indifferent to its socio-political milieu. Rather it sees such spirituality as a form of political praxis. Some of the trajectories of the spirituality include a theology of conversion, a theology of prayer, and an ethics of crude oil, with Total Freedom as the nomenclature for the specific theological perspective offered for Nigeria’s political economy of oil. While locating this theological perspective within the taxonomy of Liberation Theology, the affinity and dissonance between the two are identified.

High Stakes and Stakeholders
High Stakes and Stakeholders

Author: Kenneth C. Omeje

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9780754647270

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Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producing country. Oil generates enormous wealth but also extensive and devastating conflict in the country. High Stakes and Stakeholders critically explores the oil conflict in Nigeria, its evolution, dynamics and most significantly, the interplay and consequences of high stake politics for the reproduction and persistence of the conflict. It presents a conceptual anatomy of state-oil industry-society relations and demonstrates how the embedded material interests and accumulation patterns of different stakeholders underlie, shape and complicate both the oil conflict and security. In addition, the book provides key insights into comparable conflicts elsewhere in the global south, developing a logical framework for resolving the oil conflict in Nigeria and for reforming the security sector. This book is valuable reading material for courses in international political economy, social ecology, development studies, African politics, conflict and security studies, and environmental law and management. It will also be of interest to policy practitioners, civil societies and the oil industry.

The Political Economy of Oil Resource Conflicts
The Political Economy of Oil Resource Conflicts

Author: Ndubuisi Ndubechukwu Nwokolo

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

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Oil resources are the mainstay of Nigeria's economy, but also a major source of affliction to the village communities in which they are located. This study uses the oil village communities in Nigeria, with particular focus on Delta state. It seeks to explore the extent to which the presence of oil fuels violent conflicts in these village communities, and how the moulding of socio-economic and political structures in local oil village communities by the presence of oil resources gives rise to economic opportunism and grievance characteristics. The research employs a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews, FGD and documentary sources to collect and analyse data for the study. It adopts structural conflict theory as the anchor theory of the research, with the support of environmental scarcity theory and greed vs. grievance theory for the analysis and interpretation of data. The research also applies micro-level analysis and non-state perspectives, which is a deviation from previous studies, which have applied macro-level analysis and state-centric perspectives in exploring oil resource conflicts. With literature positing that behaviours such as rent seeking, greed and the pursuit of grievances arise in many oil abundant states, the research demonstrates that oil resources fuel violent conflicts in oil village communities through the changes it brings to local socio-economic conditions: changes such as poverty, unemployment and land struggle; and changes from traditional power structures to new ones in which there are fierce struggles for power, arising out of the need people feel for access to oil opportunities and benefits.

Nigeria at Fifty
Nigeria at Fifty

Author: Ebenezer Obadare

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1317985524

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Nigeria, Africa’s most populous and biggest democracy, celebrates her fiftieth year as an independent nation in October 2010. As the cliché states, ‘As Nigeria goes, so goes Africa’. This book frames the socio-historical and political trajectory of Nigeria while examining the many dimensions of the critical choices that she has made as an independent nation. How does the social composition of interest and power illuminate the actualities and narratives of the Nigerian crisis? How have the choices made by Nigerian leaders structured, and/or have been structured by, the character of the Nigerian state and state-society relations? In what ways is Nigeria’s mono-product, debt-ridden, dependent economy fed by ‘the politics of plunder’? And what are the implications of these questions for the structural relationships of production, reproduction and consumption? This book confronts these questions by making state-centric approaches to understanding African countries speak to relevant social theories that pluralize and complicate our understanding of the specific challenges of a prototypical postcolonial state. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.

Moving Forward
Moving Forward

Author: Heather M. Morgan

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2011-10-18

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1443834807

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This book has been compiled following the quality and reception of papers presented at the Moving Forward Postgraduate Conference, held at the University of Aberdeen, 21–22 July 2009. The volume comprises editorial and seven substantive papers on the themes of ‘tradition and transformation’, carefully chosen by the editorial team from in excess of fifty full written papers. These represent and tender a wide range of scholarly approaches to and within the arts and social sciences; the remit of Moving Forward. Each paper has been catered to a non-specialist audience in order to make the collection more widely accessible. Although ‘tradition and transformation’ seems loose terminology in many respects, it struck the editors that the dichotomy between past and future, the desire to respect history but also to effect change, and the presence of the present, were three issues that resounded throughout the conference contributions, but were those specifically captured within the selected papers. From each of six disciplinary areas, ranging across the arts and social sciences, delegates use the freedom of their positions as early-career researchers to boldly explore relations between these concepts without fear of censure, but with enthusiasm and energy for academic knowledge development and contribution. Indeed, through the papers chosen for inclusion here, distinct in their disciplinary origins, approaches and foci, we emphasise the many similarities that exist among the arts and social sciences subjects.

Dreams and Visions in African Pentecostal Spirituality
Dreams and Visions in African Pentecostal Spirituality

Author: Anna M. Droll

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-09-29

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9004541225

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Euro-Western descriptions of knowledge and its sources fall short of accommodating the spiritual, experiential terrain of the imagination. What of the embodied, affective knowing that characterizes Pentecostal epistemology, that is, the distinctive Pentecostal-Charismatic knowing derived from dreams and visions (D/Vs)? In this stunning ethnographic work, the author merges African scholarship with an investigation of what visioners say about the significance of their D/Vs for Christian life and spirituality. Revealing data showcases case studies for their biblical and theological articulations of the value of D/V experiences and affirms them as sources of Pentecostal love, ministerial agency, and the missionary impulse.

A Dangerous Awakening
A Dangerous Awakening

Author: Iheanyi M. Enwerem

Publisher: Ifra

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

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Students of religion and interested observers of politics in Africa will cherish this book for providing a thorough analysis of the origin and politics of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN). A Dangerous Awakening chronicles the religious clashes in Nigeria, and shows how religion has been used in the struggle for political power. Dr. Enwerem bases his study on interviews and unpublished memos, papers and letters not otherwise accessible to the public. This book is an invaluable contribution to the study of contemporary politics and religion in Nigeria Of the few Nigerians qualified to write on this important topic, Dr. Enwerem is the best... Reflective, thorough and mature, he has written a brilliant account of the most dynamic organization of Nigerian Christianity during the 20th century. The book teaches, challenges and provokes - qualities that define an outstanding work that will stand the test of time.