POLITICAL ECONOMY OF OIL IN NIGERIA: RESOURCE CURSE AND THE CLAMOUR FOR OWNERSHIP BY THE NIGER DELTA

Abstract

This paper considers the problem of resource curse and the incessant clamour for resource ownership and control by indigenes of the Niger Delta, against the backdrop of the continued socio-economic deprivation and marginalisation of the indigenes of the region by the Nigeria State. It is an irony that a region richly endowed with vast oil and gas resources - from which the majority of the Nation’s revenue is derived - still languishes in mass poverty, under development and environmental degradation. This is what political analysts and sociologists alike refer to as the resource curse. The Nigerian State operates a command and control legal and regulatory system, allocating to itself exclusive ownership rights over the country’s petroleum resources. These ownership rights are then allocated to prospective investors without correspondingly providing for the interest of the Niger Delta people. This paper argues that the non-consideration of the interest of the Niger Delta people in the allocation of these rights forms the crux of the agitation and crisis in that region. The paper furthers to explain the international concept of the right to self-determination vis-à-vis the challenges posed by the federal structure of the country and the centralized system of ownership and control of petroleum resources in Nigeria. The paper proposes that specific accommodation of the interest of the Niger Delta people in the allocation of petroleum ownership rights by the Nigerian State through relevant legislations such as the Petroleum Industry Bill is fundamental to resolving the Niger Delta crisis.