In recent years, local guerillas in balaclavas and speed boats, armed with enormous rounds of ammunition, have taken on the oil companies. They demand the right to live in their own clean and unpolluted land, and that the delta is restored. These dramatic images document for the first time the extent of the enviromental damage and the daily conditions people there are forced to live under, revealing not only to the world, but also to Nigeria itself, what exactly is happening to their country, where everything is being taken from this land - and nothing is being given back to the people.
Dr. Dike has made a contribution to the study of Nigeria's principal formative period by drawing on local as well as British sources for his material. He describes how the revolution in trade reacted upon the social and political systems and how the existing native governments were gradually supplanted by British sonsular power. His study ends with the recognition of the British claim to supremacy in the Niger territories at the Berlin West African Conference of 1885.
In the few decades since the 1956 discovery of oil at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, the NDR, and the entire state of Nigeria, have been dramatically transformed. Oil exploration in the NDR has led to the construction of hastily built oil infrastructures that have, perhaps forever, altered the livelihoods of millions as well as the patterns of Nigerian politics. Whereas Nigeria''s agricultural and other exports had been diverse, Nigeria''s economy is now completely dependent on oil revenues. In many ways, the global demand for oil should have translated to great developmental success in Nigeria. But the growing level of per capita GDP is deceiving; at least 80% of the Nigerian population works in the informal economy and lives below the poverty line. To date, survey textbooks on African politics or development studies have skirted the details surrounding this profoundly traumatized region. Horror in Paradise is an attempt to fill that critical gap. The contributors to this book include scholars from leading Nigerian universities, Africanist scholars from the U.S. and the U.K., and development practitioners with experience in Nigeria (USAID, UNDP). Together, they offer a range of frameworks for thinking about the ongoing crises of the NDR, organized as: Part I: Culture, Gender, and the Environment; Part II: Governance; Part III: Development; and Part IV: Security. The book aims to facilitate scholarly and policy-oriented discussions of the region''s sometimes complex inter-related challenges and, in turn, increase both national and global attention to the plight of the NDR. This book is part of the African World Series , edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. " Horror in Paradise offers a compelling and systematic approach to unpacking the cross-cutting crises of the Niger Delta. In offering frameworks of study for channels of development, governance, and security -- among others -- contributors present a roadmap for understanding the historical genesis of crises in the Delta, as well as the structural impediments to crisis recovery. Investigators assessing the many contradictions in Nigeria -- aptly captured in the volume''s title -- will find value in both the analytic rigor of the contributions, as well as the breadth of the thematic coverage." -- Scott Edwards, Ph.D., Amnesty International (Director of International Advocacy for Africa and Director of the Science for Human Rights program at Amnesty International, USA), George Washington University (Professorial Lecturer on Development in Africa, Elliot School of International Affairs) " Horror in Paradise presents the glaring paradox between abundant resource endowment and the harrowing conditions spawned by the crises of deprivation in Africa''s most prolific oil producing region in critically stark, yet empathetic perspectives. In this book, the voices of a new generation of outstanding scholars tellingly explore the contradictions that underpin the betrayal of the hopes for people-centred development and security in the oil-rich, but impoverished Niger Delta. This book vividly captures the role of local and global actors in the unfolding complex crises and represents a major contribution to existing studies on the Niger Delta." -- Cyril Obi, Ph.D., Program Director, Social Science Research Council, African Peacebuilding Network (APN) " Horror in Paradise is a collection of intellectually stimulating essays on Nigeria''s oil inebriation. It presents a comprehensive, insightful and multifaceted analysis of the Niger Delta crisis. The book''s lucid explication of the historical, political, material and ideational dimensions of the Niger Delta crisis is without doubt one of the most engaging. This is essential reading." -- Temitope B. Oriola, PhD, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston "The Federal Republic of Nigeria has transitioned into an important oil-producing nation but its Niger Delta Region has sunk in a downward spiral of poverty, violence, political decay and human suffering, constituting a formidable puzzle to scholars. Horror in Paradise provides an analytical framework to understand the historical roots as well as the political, social and developmental dimensions of crises in the region. Horror in Paradise sheds light on how the economy of extraction has turned the Niger Delta into a hopeless place. Students as well as policy practitioners and activists for social justice will find this collection useful in promoting progress and sustainable development in the Niger Delta." -- Masse Ndiaye, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar at the Midlo International Center, University of New Orleans "No work I know offers a more insightful view of the deeply troubled region of the Niger Delta, if only because, instead of being limited to mere advocacy, it gives a voice to a number of Nigerian citizens with different experiences, different perspectives and different forms of involvement in the complex and conflicted roots of this human and environmental tragedy." -- Dr. Edouard Bustin, Professor in Political Science and the African Studies Center, and Director, Francophone Africa Research Group, Boston University " Horror in Paradise serves as an excellent survey text...a useful contribution to an undergraduate level introductory course on Nigeria. While much of the political science literature on the region focuses on economic factors, the editors have offered a valuable contribution to the extant scholarship by presenting a multitude of angles from which to understand the ongoing conflicts of the Niger Delta." -- Adria Tinnin, University of California, Los Angeles
The recent escalation in the violent conflict in the Niger Delta has brought the region to the forefront of international energy and security concerns. This book analyses the causes, dynamics and politics underpinning oil-related violence in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It focuses on the drivers of the conflict, as well as the ways the crises spawned by the political economy of oil and contradictions within Nigeria's ethnic politics have contributed to the morphing of initially poorly coordinated, largely non-violent protests into a pan-Delta insurgency. Approaching the issue from a number of perspectives, the book offers the most up-to-date and comprehensive analysis available of the varied dimensions of the conflict. Combining empirically-based and analytic chapters, it attempts to explain the causes of the escalation in violence, the various actors, levels and dynamics involved, and the policy challenges faced with regard to conflict management/resolution and the options for peace. It also examines the role of oil as a commodity of global strategic significance, addressing the relationship between oil, energy security and development in the Niger Delta.
The 1990s heralded waves of spectacular forms of local resistance and globalized protest against oil exploitation and environmental pollution in oil-producing regions of the developing world. One of the most spectacular local uprisings against global oil multinationals was led by the Ogoni people who were protesting against the exploitation and marginalization of oil-producing ethnic minority communities in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. However, the hanging on November 10, 1995 of nine Ogoni ethnic minority and environmental justice activists, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, only served to exacerbate protests in later years. Within a decade, dozens of locally rooted insurgent groups emerged in the Niger Delta and construed themselves as part of the social movement for ethnic minority rights and environmental justice which dates back to colonial times. However, the trajectory of the revolutionary momentum has changed over time, reflecting a mix of progressive, opportunistic and retrogressive trends. This book provides a critical study of the trajectory of struggles in the Niger Delta since 1995, paying attention to continuities and changes, including recent developments linked to the shift from local resistance, to the rupturing of the Presidential Amnesty peace deal (largely to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) and the resurgence low-intensity sporadic armed militancy—led by the Niger Delta Avengers militia among others. The contributors critically interrogate the nature of the region’s political economy, socio-economic trends and trajectories over the past two decades. This collection also accentuates the lessons learnt, prospects for self-determination, socio-economic and environmental justice and peace in the aftermath of the hanging.
International institutions (United Nations, World Bank) and multinational companies have voiced concern over the adverse impact of resource extraction activities on the livelihood of indigenous communities. This volume examines mega resource extraction projects in Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Chad, Cameroon, India, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines.
Omolade Adunbi investigates the myths behind competing claims to oil wealth in Nigeria's Niger Delta. Looking at ownership of natural resources, oil extraction practices, government control over oil resources, and discourse about oil, Adunbi shows how symbolic claims have created an "oil citizenship." He explores the ways NGOs, militant groups, and community organizers invoke an ancestral promise to defend land disputes, justify disruptive actions, or organize against oil corporations. Policies to control the abundant resources have increased contestations over wealth, transformed the relationship of people to their environment, and produced unique forms of power, governance, and belonging.
The book examines the nexus between youth conflict and the occult drawing its insights from the oil-rich Niger Delta of Nigeria. It sees the occult represented by the Egbesu deity in this conflict as a form of religious belief imbued in this case with the powers of good. Thus, the religious occult is regenerated and re-energised as an idiom of justice and fairness within the Nigerian state by militant youth fighting the forces of the Nigerian state. Ingeniously, the young men simply dug into the cultural repertoire of the people for a hitherto popular expression of justice and perceived source of potency which they felt would not only provide spiritual protection but also pander to the popular imagination of justice. Even against the background prevalent Christianity, the Egbesu does not generate tension in beliefs but responds to the critical exigency of the immediate socio-political milieu of the people.
Greenhouse-induced climate warming increasingly appears to be a reality, and the warming climate will be accompanied by an accelerated sea level rise - as much as 60-100 cm over the next century. What is commonly absent in the discussion of rising sea level, however, is the role played by the subsidence of low-lying coastal areas, which can have a far greater local effect than the eustatic rise of the sea. The combined sea-level rise and land subsidence will almost certainly make the greatest impact on coastal societies in the densely populated regions of southern Asia, but its effects will be felt globally. This volume explores the concepts of sea-level rise and coastal subsidence, both natural and anthropogenically accelerated, in the form of a series of case studies in such diverse locations as Bangkok, Bangladesh, Venice, and the Niger and Mississippi deltas, as well as a discussion of the economic, engineering and policy responses that must be considered if the effects of local sea-level rise are to be mitigated.
