Marc-Antoine Perouse De Montclos has written a significant and detailed account of violence, poverty and politics in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. Using both historical and contemporary data, he illustrates how the complex interrelationship of weak government, federalism, ethnic conflict, acephalous traditional societies, ethnic competition, prior civil war and the land-based oil production found in the Niger Delta has led to such poor results for its inhabitants. The main point, and strength of the book, is that simplistic explanations for the region’s problems – based only on the resource curse – fall short of a solid understanding of the region.
The book is divided into three parts. The first outlines the history of the Delta through five key periods, from 1960 to 2020, examining power struggles and jealousies going all the way back to the periods of slavery and colonisation. He shows how the history of acephalous and competing traditional structures helped facilitate fragmentation and how these were exacerbated by the Igbo secession movement and changing state boundaries – all of which militates against a larger regional or national reconciliation.
The second part examines the oil industry in Nigeria to show its role in these problems. He also illustrates how the agency of leaders of international oil companies, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company and privately owned oil companies has impacted, and has been impacted by, the problems of the region. The often-ignored role of local civil actors, who use violence or theft to obtain their shares of regional resources, is also examined, especially for the latter’s role in disorder and violence. Perouse de Montclos also calls out the double standard of attributing most blame to international actors while ignoring the agency of Nigerian actors.
The third part of the book outlines the centrality of the state (sometimes through commission, sometimes omission, sometimes weakness and usually incompetence) in promoting, facilitating or condoning violence in the region. Importantly, the government’s inability to project power is partially due to the geography and remoteness of the Delta, which adds complexity to the story. But at the core of the problem is poor governance and corruption. Government exists and operates in the mix of the modern and the traditional, private and public oil owners, the federal and the state, and the state and local and all with local ‘cult societies’, which engage in piracy and violence to extract oil resources. These dynamics ensure that few simple solutions exist for the region and its development.
The book is punctuated with interesting details and anecdotes that make for enjoyable reading, like his public singing, the story of naked female protesters, his meetings with Ken Saro-Wiwa and his secret interviews with those engaged in bunkering (stealing and then selling oil, usually by first damaging oil pipes). Although too much blame for current problems can be attributed to the existence of oil in the Delta, too little can also be attributed to it. For example, he indicates that the Dutch disease has indeed impacted Nigeria, and the Dutch disease was central to the initial resource curse claims of Sachs and Warner. Therefore, part of the resource curse played out in the region. Also, he denies a significant role for oil in the Biafran secession by showing evidence that the pogroms launched against the Igbo were a more significant cause. However, like with the secession in Katanga (now the DRC), without the wealth of oil (or, in Katanga’s case, copper) or the promise of wealth from oil (or copper), would-be secessionist leaders’ abilities to assemble resources and to launch secession movements with a mix of international, regional and local allies would have been much lower. Weak government indeed leads to inefficiencies and corruption, but African leaders have very often intentionally weakened institutions so they can better pilfer and control them to gain riches and stay in power. This is easier to do with majority state ownership of these resources. So, the causal arrow can go both ways. The evidence from the Delta does not prove that there were no negative resource curse outcomes; rather, it shows that other particularly important variables played incredibly significant roles, especially vis-à-vis the chaos and violence of the region. In sum, this is an informative and well-written book on the history, politics and dilemmas of development in the Niger Delta.
