


































In ternationa l
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African Journal of Environmental Economics and Management ISSN 2375-0707 Vol. 6 (2), pp. 413-423, February, 
2018. Available online at www.internationalscholarsjournals.org © International Scholars Journals 

 

Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. 

 

Full Length Research Paper 
 

    Conflict and resource control in the Niger Delta:                     
Implications for the Gulf of Guinea Region 

 
       Felix Ifeanyichukwu Igbeke 

 
Department of Political Science and International Relations, Abia State University, Uturu, Nigeria. E-mail: felix.igbeke@gmail.com. 

 
Accepted 9 March, 2016 

 
Gaps between the definition of expectations, grants of power and verification of accruals from resources, 
especially oil and gas, tend to undergird the governance processes in most states that comprise the Gulf of 
Guinea. These gaps have been responsible for the various problems that have become part of, and which 
have engendered violence and conflict in the region. As a major stakeholder in the politics and economic 
strength of the Gulf of Guinea, Nigeria seems to be responsible for the continued crisis in the region. The 
study, using a coalescence of theoretical explications for understanding the resource-conflict thesis, notes 
that misgovernance by Nigeria as a major stakeholder and one of the most endowed countries in the region 
negatively affects the wider Gulf of Guinea region; this negativity is manifested in the now-seeming 
intractable conflict in the region, and thus makes a case for a thorough understanding of the implications for 
both Nigeria and the wider Gulf of Guinea region in order to resolve the conflict in the African continent. 

 

Key words: Resources, governance, conflict, Gulf of Guinea, Niger Delta, Nigeria, oil and gas. 

 
INTRODUCTION 
 
The major problem of the African continent and West 
Africa in particular, can be succinctly stated to be that of 
misgovernance – either at the political, economic, social 
or cultural levels. Governance relates to decisions that 
define expectations, grant power, or verify performance in 
terms of accurate account of accruals from resources. It 
consists either of a separate process or of a specific part 
of management or leadership processes. Sometimes 
people set up a government to administer these 
processes and systems. It is thus the authority for 
defining policy, providing leadership, and managing and 
coordinating the procedures and resources that ensure 
security; the set of authorities, processes and procedures 
guiding strategic and key operational decisions made for 
the enterprise that is the state or government. It clarifies 
relationships and responsibilities among the entities 
making up the enterprise.  

Governance in its widest sense refers to all the 
processes, systems, and controls that are used to 
safeguard and grow assets in social organisations. 
According to Adeyeye (2007: 32), governance refers to 
the use of politics, economic and administrative authority 
and resources to manage or exercise control over the 
politics and resources of a given society. Thus, 

 
 

 
misgovernance in the context of this paper involves the 
accumulated issues of misappropriation of resource 
wealth by government or in some cases the inability of 
government to ensure that resources accrued for 
government and people are used appropriately for the 
good of the populace.  

In Nigeria, misgovernance is epitomized by the crisis in 
the Niger Delta, which gained ascendancy as the various 
problems in the region began to acquire a seemingly 
intractable nature. The plethora of literature on this region 
and its recurring crisis (Obi, 1997, 2001, 2009; Ibeanu, 
2000; Bannon and Collier, 2003; de Barros, 2004; 
Douglas et al., 2004; Humphreys, 2005; Collier and 
Hoeffler, 2005; Ikelegbe, 2005; Omeje, 2008; Asuni, 
2009; Basedau and Lay, 2009) point to the dialectics of 
resource governance as the incubator of internal conflicts 
in the entire Gulf of Guinea region comprising Nigeria, 
Gabon, Cameroon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Angola and 
Sao-Tome and Principe. This study focuses on Nigeria‟s 
Niger Delta to x-ray the implications of misgovernance for 
the security policy of the Gulf of Guinea region. The 
growing interest in the Gulf of Guinea region derives from 
its endowment of lucrative vast deposit of good quality oil 
and gas resources aside from other marine resources the 



Igbeke     414 
 
 

 
region has to offer (Ly, 2010).  

International oil politics now is more or less 
fundamentally about Gulf of Guinea oil and natural gas 
deposits, and control of the corridors for transporting it; 
and this is mostly because of the volatility of the Middle 
East and the proven high quality of the oil that comes 
from the West African and Gulf of Guinea region. Nigeria, 
the greatest source of African oil for export, is at the 
centre of the African oil-producing states bordering the 
Gulf of Guinea, and the Niger River is the corridor for 
transporting not only Nigerian oil and gas [but also] oil 
and gas from landlocked Niger as well (Garrison, 2009).  

According to Delano (2009: 3), over the last ten years, 
the Gulf of Guinea has emerged as a maritime hotspot 
with regional oil, natural gas, and rare mineral deposits, 
thereby drawing interest from every part of the globe. The 
true significance of the region, however, rests in its oil 
reserves and is fundamentally the prism through which 
most outside actors view it. The amount of oil the area 
can provide is estimated at roughly 54 billion barrels, just 
about 5% of the world‟s proven reserves, of which 80% 
belongs to Nigeria and Angola. Although 54 billion barrels 
seems miniscule, there is universal confidence that this 
number is an underestimate. With current production 
nearing 4.5 million barrels a day and expected to reach 
the 7 million mark by 2010, the region‟s energy 
production is rapidly increasing. According to Egbogah 
(2010), the Gulf of Guinea has about 10% of global 
energy, and is a largely unexplored basin. Nigeria is a 
dominant force in the Gulf of Guinea region of Africa. 
With 46% of the GDP of the sub-region, a high demo-
graphic size and huge deposits of oil and gas resources 
in its Niger Delta region (Egbogah, 2010), it is proper that 
any research on the conflict situation in the Gulf of 
Guinea should be started with Nigeria; and there is no 
other place to situate it than in the volatile Niger Delta 
region. This is very important given the fact that the 
problem of the Niger Delta affects everything that Nigeria 
and Africa stand for generally. 
 
 
THE PROBLEMATIQUE 
 
The Niger Delta is strategic and a crucially important 
point of departure in virtually all discourses on the 
Nigerian State and the entire Gulf of Guinea region. Over 
the decades, the region has engendered a lot of 
interesting debates, workshops, symposia and 
conferences as a result of the various governance and 
security challenges bedeviling the region. These activities 
have centred mostly on the control of the rich oil and gas 
deposits in the region and the manner of their 
exploitation, being the mainstay of the Nigerian economy. 
However, the modes of exploitation and utilization of the 
proceeds from the sale of these natural resources have 
caused instability in the region and Nigeria generally.  

Familiarity with  the  literature on the subject matter 

 
 
 

 
indicates that the internal conflicts in the oil-rich region of 
the Gulf of Guinea are as a result of many factors, some 
of which are that the struggle for the control of oil and gas 
resources increases the region‟s vulnerability to conflicts; 
greed for economic gains is the primary motivation for 
resistance and struggle for the control of oil and gas 
resources; there is profiteering from the struggle. 
Community leaders, warlords and traders profit from the 
oil and gas-related conflict situation in the region and so 
stoke the embers of the crisis for private-regarding 
interests; warlords characterize the insurgency, rebellion 
and militancy in the region in such a manner that they 
become the subject of discourse which gives them 
bargaining power; there is high level of economic and 
financial crimes involved in the struggle for the control of 
oil and gas resources in the form of pipeline vandali-
zation, piracy, oil bunkering, small arms proliferation, 
hostage-taking and kidnapping; and government‟s 
militarization of the region gives the sense of insecurity 
and people therefore feel constrained to take up arms 
against government forces; and the inadequacy of the 
democratic institutions in Nigeria means that there is little 
accountability and transparency in the management of 
revenues accruing from the exploitation of natural 
resources in the region (Ikelegbe, 2005).  

With the above information which ordinarily seem to 
have covered virtually all the aspects of the Niger Delta 
problem, undertaking another research on the region 
seems unnecessary. However, owing to the fact that the 
Niger Delta is still volatile and prone to violence and 
conflicts despite all the developmental, intellectual and 
financial resources it has received, there is need to 
explore the link between oil and gas governance and 
conflicts in the Gulf of Guinea focusing on the Niger Delta 
region of Nigeria. The reasons being given that the 
answers to the Niger Delta problem as regards oil and 
gas governance are already known but the lack of 
political will being the problem is defeatist as long as the 
problem is yet unresolved, and as long as it is becoming 
hydra-headed and octopoidal in nature. And given its 
strategic importance to the Gulf of Guinea, only a 
concrete resolution of the conflict in the region would 
make meaning. 
 

 
THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS FOR THE SYNERGY 
BETWEEN RESOURCES AND CONFLICTS 
 
There is a correlation between oil and conflict that 
suggests causation. Although scholars have always tried 
to use the three major counter-examples of Botswana, 
Namibia and South Africa as mineral-dependent African 
countries that do not suffer from this symptom (Mokhawa, 
2005: 21; Paes, 2005: 305–23; Omeje, 2008), and a few 
other big success stories of rich oil-producing countries 
like Norway, the United Arab Emirates and the Sultanate 
of Brunei, does not mean that the thesis is wrong or can 



415     Afr. J.  Environ. Econ. Manage.
 
 
 

 
be ignored. Thus, there are several theories about how oil 
fuels conflict that emerged out of large-number of 
quantitative studies that found strong correlations 
between oil dependency and various kinds of violence. 
Humphreys (2005) outlined six rival families of 
mechanisms that could explain the relationship between 
natural resources and conflicts: (a) the greedy rebels 
mechanism; (b) the greedy outsiders mechanism; (c) the 
grievance mechanism; (d) the feasibility mechanism; (e) 
the weak states mechanism; and (f) the sparse networks 
mechanism.  

In the greedy rebels‟ mechanism, the booty character of 
natural resources motivates rebels to take up arms and/or 
continue fighting. This mechanism has three variants. In 
the first variant, domestic groups may engage in quasi-
criminal activities to benefit from resources independent 
of the state as exemplified by piracy, oil bunkering and 
kidnappings going on in the Niger Delta region. In the 
second variant, natural resources increase the prize 
value of capturing the state. This means that either 
variant could lead to either situation taking place – 
weakening the state in order to make its capture possible. 
The third variant states that if natural resources are 
concentrated in a particular region of the country, it 
makes for the possibility of that region thinking it could 
secede from the rest of the country, and that it would be 
possible to withstand the pressure and become 
prosperous.  

In the greedy outsiders‟ mechanism, greedy outsiders 
might be ready to intervene militarily – either directly or 
through support for internal conflicting factions in order to 
gain or maintain control over lucrative resources. The 
existence of natural resources may be an incentive for 
third parties – state and corporations – to engage in or 
indeed foster civil conflicts, as seen and proved in the 
Niger Delta with the involvement of Shell BP in the Ogoni 
crisis, for which they have paid huge sums as 
compensation to the people.  

In the grievance mechanism, perceived deprivation of 
producing regions and social groups create grievances 
and trigger violent uprising, especially secessionism in 
producing regions. Natural resource dependence can be 
associated with grievance rather than greed. This is 
because countries that depend on resources may 
experience transitory inequity as part of the developing 
process; such economies may be vulnerable to terms of 
trade shocks, that is, they may likely be dependent on a 
small number of commodities for their export earnings; 
the process of extraction may produce grievances, either 
through forced migration or as a result of the 
environmental damage or loss of land rights; or natural 
resource wealth may be seen to be unjustly distributed as 
seen in the case of the Niger Delta.  

In the feasibility mechanism, natural resources provide 
the means for rebel finance. Natural resources could 
provide a way to finance rebellions that have been started 
for other reasons, thereby increasing the 

 

  
 
 

 
prospects of success. This can be done either through 
control of production during the conflict or by raising 
revenues in advance to gain control of the resources 
“booty futures” (Ross, 2002).  

In the weak states mechanism, resource abundance 
reduces the quality of state institutions, and makes 
internal violent conflict more likely. State structures may 
be weaker in natural-resource-dependent economies; 
and this argument focuses on the strength of the linkage 
between the state and society. This argument means that 
when citizens are not taxed by governments, they have 
less power over them as they would have less 
information about government activity, weaker incentives 
to monitor government behaviour, and fewer instruments 
at their disposal to withdraw support from governments. 
Accordingly, resource-dependent states may have little 
compulsion to respond to the demands of their citizens or 
create structures that engage their citizens (Collier and 
Hoeffler, 2005: 512). Conversely, governments that rely 
on natural resources rather than on taxation have 
weakened incentives to create bureaucratic institutions. 
That is, such states are likely to have weak structures 
because they have less need for intrusive bureaucracies 
to raise revenue; and as such, the domestic economy is 
divorced from the State.  

In the sparse networks mechanism, rentier economies 
have a one-sided integration in the world economy and 
hence cannot develop thick terms of exchange conducive 
for peace and stability. The importance of natural 
resources may lie in their impacts on the daily economic 
activities of the citizens of an economy and how these in 
turn affect attitudes of citizens or relations between 
citizens. Thus, natural-resource-dependent economies 
may have weak manufacturing sectors and corres-
pondingly low levels of internal trade. This is because it is 
a given that trade is associated with relationship and 
cohesiveness among people. No one fights his trading 
partners as wherever there is commerce, manners are 
gentle. Moreover, through trade, partners understand one 
another‟s cultures and this helps in reducing the risks of 
conflicts between them.  

Given the above theoretical explanations to buttress the 
fact that there is a synergetic linkage between resources 
and violence or conflict, this study hypothe-sizes that the 
Niger Delta conflict is a consequence of the Nigerian 
State‟s inability to have a coherent resource wealth 
governance policy. 
 

 
NATURE AND CHARACTER OF RESOURCE 
GOVERNANCE AND DYNAMICS OF CONFLICTS IN 
THE NIGER DELTA 
 
Governance of oil wealth has always been related to the 
management of the resources of the Nigerian State. The 
concept of resource management is closely tied to that of 
resource control as the latter “…largely deals with the 



Igbeke     416 
 
 

 
need to regain ownership, control, use and management 
of resources primarily for the benefit of the communities 
and the people on whose land the resources originate, 
and secondarily, for the good governance and develop-
ment of the entire country” (Douglas et al., 2004: 7). 
Resource-rich nations like Nigeria, and especially in the 
developing world, have always had the central 
government taking over the management of resource 
wealth. Nigeria‟s oil and gas resources are controlled by 
the Federal Government which then issues oil exploration 
and production right to corporate partners in exchange for 
a share of profits, as well as joint ventures with 
multinational oil corporations (MNOCs).  

Poor management of resources, as noted by Onigbinde 
(2008), has been responsible for the Niger Delta debacle. 
She notes that many decades of neglect of people in the 
region while corrupt and repressive governments kept 
amassing unimaginable wealth from the proceeds from 
the area led to the marginalized groups seeking to 
redress the injustices and inequities in resource 
distribution. Thus, insurgency became their inherent 
method of showing their grievance for a change in the 
system. She goes on to show that with the Nigerian 
government‟s sole ownership of oil and gas wealth via the 
Petroleum Act of 1969, Offshore Oil Revenue Act of 1971 
and Land Use Act of 1978, with which government 
entered into a 50-50 joint venture agreement with Shell in 
the 1950s, and which the government has refused to 
change after more than 50 years despite the injustice of 
the landowners not getting anything, helped to trigger the 
Niger Delta conflict. The implication of the Land Use Act 
of 1978 is that “the title to any land where oil is found is 
automatically transferred to the federal government 
without adequate compensation to the landowners” 
(Bisina, 2004, July 29).  

Moreover, the government has over the past five 
decades been on the side of the MNCs whom it collects 
rents from, such that decisions on oil and gas resources 
are made directly between government and the MNCs, 
shutting out the people, who feel alienated and want to 
show their grievance. This hobnobbing with government 
has always given the MNCs the opportunity of getting 
things done their way. According to Obi (1997: 10-14), oil 
multinationals feed the Nigerian state giving room for an 
unequal partnership formalized through three types of 
joint agreements in the oil industry – the joint venture 
agreements, production-sharing agreements, and risk-
sharing contracts. Thus most of Nigeria‟s oil is produced 
by oil companies as “operators or technical partners” of 
the state.  

Basedau and Lay (2009) contradict the long-held 
beliefs in the resource curse theory which has been 
linking the extraction of natural resources to corruption, 
authoritarianism, economic decline and conflicts, and 
state, however, that “resource-conflict link is more 
complex than conceptualized in the scientific 
mainstream.” They also note that the rentier state theory 

 
 
 

 
which identifies economic stagnation, corruption and 
authoritarianism as part of the political economy of 
resource-rich states goes contrary to the resource curse 
theory in the sense that “governments use abundant 
resources to buy off opposition or suppress armed 
rebellion, thereby contributing to political stability and 
preventing armed conflicts (Basedau and Lay, 2009: 
758). Their arguments are that very high per capita 
revenues from oil allow governments of resource-rich 
countries to avoid conflict and maintain peace by a 
combination of large-scale distribution, high spending on 
the security apparatus, protection by outsiders and 
relatively more favourable state institutions.  

Collier and Hoeffler (2005) note that “large rents are not 
intrinsically a curse; they obviously have the potential to 
accelerate peaceful development, and this potential has 
occasionally been realized, as in Botswana … clearly, in 
some circumstances resource rents induce or prolong 
conflict, and in others they do not” (2005:627). They go 
further to state that not only can resources finance 
conflict, but it can also induce patronage politics and 
motivate conflict, especially in the form of secessions, as 
currently being seen in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. 
As they noted: 
 
There is now a case for extending controls to oil: in the 
Delta region of Nigeria, large-scale organized crime is 
bunkering oil from pipelines to the scale of around $1 
billion per year, selling it in East Asia. There is obviously 
scope for this massive criminal activity to link with the 
political secessionists of the Delta region. 
 
As noted by Omeje (2007: 46), oil-related rents (royalties, 
taxes, oil export earnings, interests on joint venture 
investments, etc.) are the lifeblood of Nigeria‟s economy. 
The domestic budget and the huge import trade sector 
are mainly financed by oil revenues. Factions of the 
country‟s elite, with strong interests in the allocation, 
appropriation, and use of oil revenues, dominate all levels 
of government. Their interests conveniently combine with 
those of the state to support a regime of predatory 
accumulation and lawlessness… Thus, the actions of 
some TNOCs – insensitivity to the local environment; 
destruction of biodiversity; inflation of contracts, imports, 
and supplies; and collusion with state officials to subvert 
tax and investment policies – are made possible by the 
accumulation climate encouraged by the rent-seeking 
political economy.  

According to Volman (2003: 1), the possession of oil 
resources, and the revenues that accrue to governments 
from the exploitation of this resource, has had a decisive 
impact on the security and stability of nearly every African 
country that has significant amounts of oil. This has been 
true in the past and oil is certain to have a similar impact 
on those countries where it is only now being discovered 
and exploited.  

Countries without oil certainly can become militarized 



417     Afr. J.  Environ. Econ. Manage.
 
 

 
and experience conflict with their neighbors or serious 
internal violence, but the possession of oil resources has 
unique consequences for national security and internal 
stability. This is due to the special characteristics of oil 
production. On the one hand, oil production is capital 
intensive; it can only be undertaken only by companies 
willing to invest immense amounts of capital and, thus, 
requires the cooperation of central governments willing 
and able to protect these large foreign investments. On 
the other hand, oil production yields vast revenues for 
African governments. This allows them to make large 
arms purchases, to build up their military forces, and to 
strengthen internal security forces. However, it also can 
lead to internal political conflict and violence because it 
increases the stakes of political competition and 
encourages rival leaders and parties to resort to the use 
of force to gain control of the oil revenues.  

Moreover, because oil revenues are managed by 
central governments that are often neither democratic nor 
financially transparent, the money generated by oil 
production often does not contribute to national economic 
development, but is instead diverted into the bank 
accounts of government officials or used to finance 
unnecessary prestige projects. The misuse of oil 
revenues exacerbates political discontent and can 
provoke internal political violence. Finally, because oil 
production is often carried out with few, if any, 
environmental controls, it can have a devastating effect 
on people living in the oil-producing areas, thus further 
aggravating public unrest. As the following cases 
illustrate, oil production does not always cause 
militarization and violence, but it usually has a negative 
impact on the security and stability of those countries that 
have large oil resources.  

Talking about institutional weaknesses of resource-rich 
states and the linkage with the performance of their 
governments, Postali (2009: 208) notes that countries 
with abundance of resource wealth exhibit problematic 
fiscal policies and small levels of domestic savings in 
which case the resource rents are wasted in financing 
ordinary governmental expenses.  

Perhaps the most contentious role of the Nigerian state 
relates to the sharing of oil revenues. At its heart is the 
feeling that oil wealth from the Niger Delta has been used 
largely for developing other parts of the country or taken 
abroad, while the “goose that lays the golden eggs” has 
been neglected and underdeveloped. This is based on 
the policy shifts in the allocative principle that national 
revenues should be shared on the principle that 
resources should be returned to the site of their 
generation on the basis of the ratio of their contribution to 
the national purse. The argument is when regions that 
covered with ethnic majority groups produced the bulk of 
national revenues they enjoyed the derivation principle 
which ensured that they retained the bulk of the wealth 
generated within their regions. Since the end of the civil 
war in 1970 when the bulk of revenues came from oil 

 
 

 
from the ethnic minority region of the Niger Delta, 
derivation was increasingly reduced from 50 to 3% in the 
1980‟s and only increased to 13% in 2001. The 
domination of the oil wealth produced from the region by 
non-Deltans has also fuelled resentment and anger 
amidst claims that the oil of the region is being stolen by 
other groups, leaving the source of the wealth to wallow 
in paradoxical poverty (Douglas et al., 2004; Watts, 2008; 
Ebeku, 2008: 400-403; Asuni, 2009).  

According to Osuoka (2007), petroleum exploitation in 
the Niger Delta region of the country has mainly been 
carried out by transnational companies that operate joint 
ventures with the federal government. With this arrange-
ment, oil and gas revenues and taxes are paid to the 
federal government. A system of revenue sharing exists 
whereby the federal government transfers some 
petroleum revenues to all the 36 states and 774 local 
government councils in the country. Under the arrange-
ment, an attempt is made to pay 13% of petroleum 
revenues as derivation fund to the oil producing states as 
stipulated by the 1999 constitution. However, the fate of 
revenues and the derivation fund has continued to be a 
source of controversy and tension between the federal 
government and the state governments. The general 
understanding is that a Federation Account exists to 
which oil and gas revenues are paid with a revenue 
sharing formula existing somehow as follows: Federal 
Government, 52.68%; States, 26.72%; and Local 
Governments, 20.60% (Osuoka, 2007: 58). Thus, the 
dynamics of violence in the Niger Delta are best 
understood when put through the test of the conditions 
and contextual factors that accentuated them. According 
to Mahler (2010), some of them are: 
 
 
Oil dependence and abundance 
 
This means that the amount of oil is not increasing as the 
number of the population and the fact that other states in 
Africa have also discovered oil thus making Nigeria not 
the only country that is looked upon by the international 
community for oil and gas resources. Thus, she notes: 
 
This low per capita oil wealth can be considered to be 
one of the factors explaining why oil in Nigeria cannot 
have a stabilizing or conflict-reducing effect comparable 
to that in oil-exporting countries such as Saudi Arabia or 
Kuwait. Moreover, the substantial decline in oil revenues 
in the 1980s and 1990s can also be viewed as having 
contributed to an increase in the potential for conflict 
(Mahler, 2010: 15). 
 
 
Resource management and economic distortions 
 
There is ample proof that oil and gas resources in Nigeria 
are not well managed. This has resulted in oil spillages 



Igbeke     418 
 
 

 
that are not taken care of, not by the multinational oil 
corporations nor by the Nigerian government. Again,  
Nigeria is one of the major gas flarers in the world (second after 

Russia), and this poses environmental challenges to the 

region. Moreover, the manner of distribution of resource 

wealth leaves much to be desired and this has fired the 
resolve of the Niger Delta people to fight for their rights to 
be taken seriously as they wallow in poverty when there 
is abundance under their feet. The combination of these 
factors ensures that the violence in the oil-rich Niger 
Delta continues. Thus, Mahler states that: 
 
Poverty had been prevalent in Nigeria before the “oil era,” 
but it increased drastically in the context of the declining 
oil revenues in the second half of the 1980s, the 
economic crisis, and the structural policy reforms, all of 
which were related to the ineffective and unsustainable 
resource management. The percentage of the population 
living in extreme poverty rose from approximately 35% in 
1970 to 70% in the middle of the 1990s (Mahler, 2010: 
17). 
 
 
Geographic location of resources within the country 
 
The geographical location of the Niger Delta region 
makes it inaccessible; it has marshes, creeks and dense 
mangrove forests. This makes it easier for oil spills, bush 
burning due to gas flaring and contamination of drinking 
water to affect the region easily. To further underscore 
the point being made, as it relates to the entire Gulf of 
Guinea region, Mahler (2010: 19) states as follows: 
 
Deep offshore oil production in the Gulf of Guinea has 
only recently become more relevant. Today this offshore 
production represents about 15% of Nigeria‟s total oil 
production. Offshore exploitation is far more expensive; 
nevertheless, it has become more attractive to multi-
national oil companies in the context of the increased 
attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta. Although the 
attacks on offshore oil platforms by the Movement for the 
Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in June 2008 
showed that offshore oil production is not beyond the 
reach of militant aggression, offshore operations are still 
markedly less vulnerable than operations in the Delta. A 
further shift of oil production into the Gulf of Guinea could 
moreover at least somewhat reduce the grievance related 
conflict potential, as the people in the Delta would be less 
affected by air, land, and drinking water pollution. 
 

 
Domestic and international actors involved in the 
resource sector 
 
Nigeria‟s rentier nature has made its supervisory agency 
in the oil and gas sector to be redundant. The Nigerian 
National Petroleum Company (NNPC) has been more of 
an observer in the oil and gas exploration as it does not 

 
 
 

 
engage in exploration but in monitoring the multinational 
oil companies, who employ experts to do its work and pay 
rents to the Nigerian government, excluding the local oil 
companies in the process. With a 57% stake in the joint 
venture contracts it has with all oil companies operating in 
Nigeria, the NNPC does not seem to care how much is 
made as long as money keeps coming into the coffers of 
government.  

The problem with this kind of arrangement is that in the 
process it had negatively affected the benefits Nigeria 
should get from the resources. As noted by Mahler (2010: 
20): 
 
Because of their economic importance (for example, 
technical know-how), the multinationals and especially 
Shell have influenced the dynamics of the violent 
conflicts, mainly through three causal channels: Firstly, 
they obviously carry at least part of the blame for the 
environmental pollution caused by oil production in the 
Delta. Furthermore, they have indirectly contributed to the 
increased militarization of the conflicts, for example, by 
demanding that the Nigerian state provide official security 
services, even when the civil protests were still mainly 
peaceful, as in the mid-1990s. The oil companies also 
make use of private security services, some of which are 
extremely brutal. Some oil companies have also provided 
financial assistance to potential militant actors in order to 
“pacify” them. While this might reduce violence in the 
short term, the risks of further empowerment of militant 
groups in the long run are obvious. Finally, foreign oil 
companies provide financial support and different types of 
“development projects” to their so-called host 
communities…increased after the Ogoni protests, and 
while it, in the absence of responsible state actors, brings 
about some short-term mitigation of daily burdens for the 
local people, it also has conflict triggering impacts. The 
donations for example generate resentment between the 
people of the host communities and other (ethnic) 
communities which do not benefit from such financial 
support. 
 
 
Transnational oil theft network 
 
The issue of oil bunkering or theft of oil in the Niger Delta 
region has been well documented as it has become one 
of the major sources of making money in the region. Most 
of the militant activities in the region are linked to this 
thriving trade. The petroleum resources are sold to 
neighbouring states like Cote d‟Ivoire, Senegal and Benin 
where they are refined and sold, sometimes even back to 
Nigeria. The enormity of the criminal network is such that 
it is not only the pipeline saboteurs, but the security 
outfits and government officials that are involved in the 
sleaze that has ensured that a lot of people make a lot of 
money from unauthorized sale of petroleum resources.  

This is done mainly in the high seas and in the creeks 
and involves a whole lot of people. “Because of the broad 



419     Afr. J.  Environ. Econ. Manage. 
 
 

 
involvement of influential persons in illegal oil theft, the 
state approach to solving the Niger Delta crisis is marked 
by significant inconsistency and, despite growing 
militarization, persistent reluctance and a lack of 
engagement” (Mahler, 2010: 21). 
 
 
International demand and customer structure 
 
According to Mahler (2010: 21), Nigeria currently exports 
the majority of its oil, approximately 50%, to the United 
States. The United States, in turn, imports approximately 
10% of its oil from Nigeria, and intends to increase this 
share (and that accounts for the AFRICOM craze). The 
relationship between the two countries since Nigeria‟s 
transition to democracy in 1999 has been harmonious 
and has been marked by a very benevolent attitude 
towards Nigeria on the part of the United States. In 
parallel with the expansion of oil imports from Nigeria, the 
United States has increased its supplying of weapons to 
the country and has expanded its military presence in the 
Gulf of Guinea, for example, via naval patrols.  

Moreover, in December 2005 the two countries 
announced coordinated actions to counter small arms 
trafficking, to bolster maritime and coastal security, to 
promote community development and combat poverty, 
and to fight money laundering and other financial crimes. 
Primarily because of its own economic interests (oil 
supply), and also because of strategic considerations with 
respect to the role of Nigeria as a regional power in West 
Africa, the United States is generally interested in 
reducing the internal instability in the country. Neverthe-
less, the United States‟ efforts to exert its influence on the 
violent conflict in the Niger Delta have not been quite 
successful. This is exactly why AFRICOM has become an 
issue in intellectual discourse in the Gulf of Guinea 
region. 
 

 
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT 
SECURITY POLICY FOR THE NIGER DELTA 
 
The link between oil and gas governance and the 
implications for the Nigerian government‟s security policy 
in the Niger Delta region cannot be effectively discussed 
without going along with the thoughts of Mahler (2010: 7), 
which had noted that the rentier nature of the Nigerian 
economy was responsible for the problem. She notes that 
the rentier state theory is universally valid and attributes 
the linkage between oil rents and authoritarianism to the 
following causal mechanisms: Firstly, it is presumed that 
oil rents foster the formation of stabilizing patronage 
networks, widespread clientelism, and distribution poli-
cies, all of which lessen the pressure from the population 
to democratize and may additionally result in the 
depoliticization of the society. Secondly, the abundance 
of revenues generated by the oil sector means that 

 
 

 
national rulers do not need to tax the population. This 
again may disburden the political elite of demands from 
the population for political participation and accountability 
on the part of the elites. The rentier state theory does not 
focus primarily on violence, but rather on the stability of 
authoritarian rule. However, she notes that it can be 
assumed that resource wealth makes it easier for 
authoritarian rulers to use violence in the form of political 
repression, for example, because it enables the financing 
of a massive security apparatus.  

Mahler introduces the issue of the resource curse 
thesis, which has gained prominence within the 
theoretical debate on natural resources. Noting the 
already-known fact that resource wealth is linked to poor 
economic growth and other economic problems such as 
Dutch disease effects and poor performance of the 
agricultural and manufacturing sectors accompanied by 
an insufficient degree of diversification and extreme 
vulnerability towards external shocks; Mahler focuses on 
the link between natural resources and violent conflicts, 
that is to say, that resource-dependent countries are 
more likely to experience internal instability and violent 
conflict than non-resource countries. This is partly 
contradictory to the rentier-state theory.  

The causal mechanisms assumed to be responsible for 
this link, according to Mahler (2010:8) include, on the one 
hand, the fact that natural resources can be the motive 
for violent conflicts. This means that parts of the popu-
lation might feel that they are deprived of the financial 
benefits of the resource revenues – while suffering from 
the ecological and social impacts of production (motive of 
grievance) – or that resource wealth can be the target of 
avaricious rebels who wish to take possession of the 
resource revenues (motive of greed). On the other hand, 
resource revenues can serve as a catalyst for violent 
conflict by financing the rebel groups and other actors 
involved (opportunity, feasibility) and thus prolonging the 
conflict. Finally, resources, and especially oil, can 
indirectly increase the likelihood of violent conflict by 
weakening political institutions and/or by triggering 
socioeconomic decline, because oil producers tend to 
have weaker state apparatuses than one would expect 
given their level of income because the rulers have less 
need of a socially intrusive and elaborate bureaucratic 
system to raise revenues.  

As far as implications for security policy is concerned, 
the Niger Delta is a very important case study for Africa 
especially as it provides a clear example of the link 
between poor resource management and protracted con-
flicts. According to Onigbinde (2008: 18-19), the Nigerian 
case can be used as an example of resource-rich 
countries in Africa and the challenge they face once they 
start to incur wealth from resource production and trade. 
Countries like Ghana have discovered oil thereby making 
it a nation that needs to be watched to ensure that the 
Nigerian situation is not repeated, especially when it 
holds promises of a stable democracy that Nigeria 



Igbeke     420 
 
 

 
presently lacks. The need is great because without 
ensuring that resources are adequately managed to meet 
the needs of the resource producing region, the security 
of these nations are at risk.  

Internal violence and civil wars in any African country 
have massive implications for sub-regional security. In 
this regard, a stable Nigeria is important in ensuring the 
peace and security in the sub-region and in Africa as a 
whole. Adversely, an unstable Nigeria will hinder efforts 
geared towards maintaining sub-regional stability. This 
assumption is based on the fact that it is easy for conflicts 
in one country to spread to another very quickly, turning a 
national concern into a sub-regional one.  

The problem of the Niger Delta can increasingly spread 
especially as African borders remain weak and porous. 
The artificial and porous borders between African 
countries have made for easy transportation of arms 
across these countries and so through the activities of 
“states, arm brokers and mercenaries, thousands of wea-
pons have been transferred into the Niger Delta region 
and used by state security forces, the security factions of 
oil companies and insurgent groups” (Onuoha, 2008). 
Weapons are also being cast-off into the Niger Delta from 
the Great Lakes Conflict. These examples show how 
serious the problem of porous borders in Africa is. It is 
possible to assume that if and when conflicts occur in 
other African countries; these same weapons will be 
delivered across from Nigeria to other warring factions in 
the sub-region. In addition to porous borders, ethnic 
linkages cut across borders. Strong ties between families 
and ethnic groups across borders also create a new form 
of regional insecurity as it can accelerate the flow of arms 
and other illicit acts including mobilization for conflicts.  

The Nigerian case could become a template for many 
other militant groups fighting for resource control. This 
could be through exchange of information, human capital 
and small arms and light weapons. This could 
increasingly link these groups together as they have 
similar goals and activities. The absence of strong 
intelligence between African countries makes it even 
more difficult to stop criminal activities across borders. 
Ethnic militant groups are now building networks and 
links that cut across borders and there are reports of links 
between militant groups in the Niger Delta and groups in 
Guinea and South Africa.  

Nigeria‟s role as a strong contributor to diplomacy and 
African peacekeeping initiatives could be inhibited by the 
growing insecurity and conflict in the country with a shift 
of focus of its military from international stabilization onto 
domestic security issues. Economically, Nigeria as the 
largest and the most populous country in West Africa and 
its role as an oil provider to African nations such as 
Benin, Togo and Ghana is very critical because insecurity 
in the country will affect the supply and demand of oil. 
Humphreys (2005: 509-510) noted about oil in Chad that 
“control of oil revenues has been central to Chadian 
politics for more than thirty years; it has made and broken 

 
 
 

 
political leaders; has incited violence, and has shaped 
political agendas. But what is perhaps most striking about 
Chadian oil is that, up to 2003, not a single drop has been 
pumped.”  

According to 2006 estimates by the Oil and Gas 
Journal (2007), Nigeria is the seventh largest natural gas 
reserve holder in the world and the largest in Africa. In 
October 2004, Nigeria announced that its natural gas 
reserves could be as high as 660Tcf. The government 
plans to raise earnings from natural gas exports to 50% 
of oil revenues by 2010. However, the Nigerian National 
Petroleum Company (NNPC) estimates that $15 billion in 
private sector investments is necessary to meet its 
natural gas development goals by 2010. The vast 
majority of natural gas found in Nigeria is associated, 
meaning that it occurs in Crude Oil reserves as free gas. 
Because many of the fields lack the infrastructure to 
produce the associated natural gas, it is flared. Nigeria 
flares more natural gas than any other country in the 
world, with 43% of its total annual natural gas production 
being flared. NNPC estimates that Nigerian flared natural 
gas accounts for approximately 20% of the world total. 
Nigeria is working to end natural gas flaring by 2008. 
However, Shell announced in its 2004 People and 
Environment Annual Report that it would not be able to 
meet the 2008 goal of eliminating natural gas flaring (Oil 
and Gas Journal, 2007). 
 

 
Implications of the Niger Delta conflict for the Gulf of 
Guinea Region 
 
From the above expose, it is abundantly clear that the 
conflict in the Niger Delta region has many implications 
for the Gulf of Guinea region. These are stated below: 
 
 
Globalization of conflict 
 
The insurgency in the Niger Delta has gone beyond 
Nigeria; it has gone regional, and as such, it should no 
longer be the responsibility of the Nigerian government 
but that of ECOWAS and the Gulf of Guinea Commission. 
However, the problem is that generally, individual states 
do not accept that internal problems could have regional 
implications. They prefer to call insurgents „bandits‟ and 
„militants‟, and take it as an internal problem that can be 
handled domestically even when it is clear that the 
activities of these „bandits‟ affect the country and spill 
over into other countries of the sub-region. This challenge 
of the perception of the conflicts in the various states of 
the region is hinged on the protection of sovereignty by 
these states. The quest to protect sovereignty has 
unfortunately led many states to take on more that they 
can ordinarily take instead of employing a regional and 
more global approach to stem the tide of insecurity in the 
region. 



421     Afr. J.  Environ. Econ. Manage.
 
 

 
Misuse of advantages 
 
The Gulf of Guinea has many advantages. First, because 
of its closeness to the major markets in Europe and North 
America; secondly, there are no environmental hazards; 
and thirdly, the quality of oil produced in the region is far 
better than in other places. However, the challenges are 
that there is unskilled workforce in the region. There is no 
capacity to retain everything about the oil. There is no 
diversification, even when a lot can be gleaned from the 
crude deposits in the region. Thus, there is exploitation 
and no expropriation; that is to say, government is 
incapable of acquiring all it could in order to make 
adequate use of all the wealth accruing from the oil and 
gas deposits from the region. The oil from the region 
goes out cheap and comes back expensive, and it is still 
the poor masses that suffer most in the event of high 
prices for oil and gas resources. People in the region 
become desperate as the gap between them and those 
who take out of the region becomes wider each day. 
Moreover, the rentier nature of government in resource-
rich nations like those in the Gulf of Guinea (Nigeria 
specifically), where government after collecting high rents 
from multinationals, become accomplices in the bid to 
ensure calm and acquiescence from the people of the 
region, leads to militant struggles, and in the process, a 
lot of advantages and development are lost. Moreover, as 
noted by Onyeukwu (2007: 21) “the presence of oil 
revenue of course ensured that the military dictatorships 
in Nigeria did not need to tax the majority of the people, 
which is a way was useful to them, as taxation through 
which to fund government could have led to unrest, which 
may have forced them out of government”. He further 
categorized the nature of conflicts in the ND into 5 major 
areas – intra-community; inter-community, inter-ethnic, 
community-oil company, and states-federal government 
(Onyeukwu, 2007: 23). 
 
 
Maritime security 
 
All the states in the Gulf of Guinea Region are weak in 
the waterways security. The world super powers control 
the maritime security of the Gulf of Guinea Region, and 
this is an indictment on the governments of the region. 
This weakness in the control of the waters gives room for 
penetration of the borders by external actors to even 
compound the conflicts in the region through thriving 
arms trade and preponderance of mercenary activities. 
 
 
Border security 
 
As with the waterways, so it is with the borders. 
Presently, there is porosity in the borders connecting the 
Gulf of Guinea states. Moreover, there is a report that the 
Niger Delta militants have started tracing their steps 

 
 

 
towards Ghana ostensibly to train them in the art of 
militancy as the country is grappling with how best to 
govern their new-found oil and gas resources. This does 
not bode well for the region as it could trigger conflict 
between the two countries with devastating effects. 
 
 
ECOWAS weaknesses 
 
ECOWAS has identified the Niger Delta among the hot 
spots of the region, the Commission as an institution is 
being careful not to intervene directly in Nigeria as it is its 
major financier. This is not helpful as the Commission 
had intervened directly in Togo, Cote d‟Ivoire, Liberia and 
other states in the sub-region. But then Nigeria is a 
superpower in the region and needs to be handled 
carefully. This is another major implication for the conflict 
in the region. 
 
 
Governance 
 
There has not been any serious form of governance in 
Nigeria. The thirty years of military misadventure in the 
country swept away any form of governance that the 
country was ever going to get; thus, it is difficult to talk 
about governance of oil and gas in Nigeria. Talk about 
governance can only be discussed in relation to Angola 
which has made strident effort to control its oil and gas 
resources, and it is the bedrock of the government there 
now. There is coherence in the leadership in Angola in 
terms of oil and gas unlike what obtains in Nigeria. Thus, 
three factors were responsible for the problem in the 
Nigerian State: i. Three decades of military rule that could 
not produce public good; ii. Corruption that did not allow 
for any form of governance in the sector; iii. Role of 
organized crime brought about the issue of arms in the 
region.  

These three factors exist within the context of the Niger 
Delta which had led to militancy, and which was a result 
of political consciousness that erupted after decades of 
agitation for inclusion in the affairs of resource 
governance. 
 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
This study centred on the importance of comprehending 
the synergy between the governance of resources and 
the conflict that has bedeviled the Niger Delta region of 
Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea states in general, and 
found the governance of resources by states in the Gulf 
of Guinea culpable for the imbroglio, a culpability that 
centres on government‟s laisser-faire attitude to the 
manner the resources from the region are expended to 
the generality of the populace.  

The inability of governance in Nigeria is shown in the 



Igbeke     422 
 
 

 
fact that government does not know how much oil and 
gas wealth is produced; there are no metres at the point 
of production to gauge how much oil is produced; and at 
the point of export, government depends on the oil 
companies to tell her how much is being exported. This is 
simply a very clear case of a government that is not 
serious about monitoring the activities in the area. 
Despite the fact that successive audits embarked upon by 
the Nigerian government have consistently shown these 
anomalies, government is yet to react as there are still no 
metres at the production points. Recently, the Nigeria 
Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) 
described the records of the country‟s crude production 
and export as unclear, saying that after 58 years of oil 
production, the country does not know exactly the 
quantity it produces. The oil and gas sector is shrouded in 
secrecy. The audit reconciliation carried out by NEITI in 
respect of its first and second audit report could only 
narrow down the discrepancies in revenue reporting to 
$16 million (1999 - 2004) and $155 million for 2005 (This 
Day, 29/03/2010). This does not bode good for a country 
that claims to have the interest of its people at heart. And 
of course, when people are consistently denied what is 
due them, there is bound to be crisis.  

The insecurity and conflict in the Gulf of Guinea region 
has been there for over forty years and it is a well-known 
fact that arms follow money; because there is a lot of 
resource wealth in the Gulf of Guinea, and there are 
scattered cases of skirmishes all over the neighbouring 
regions, there is bound to be arms in the region. These 
are used in the fight for control of bunkered oil that 
occasions conflicts constantly. Of course, given the role 
of political godfathers in the region that have been arming 
the youth for electoral purposes, the problem has been 
exacerbated by inconsistencies in the political leadership 
of the region. Thus, it is only through a concerted effort 
on the part of the political leadership to gain tighter 
control of the resources and for a greater accountability 
by government and all those responsible for the allocation 
of resource wealth in the region, can there be the 
abatement of conflict in the Niger Delta region in 
particular, and the Gulf of Guinea in general. 
 
 
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