Review

Reviewed Work(s): Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria by Adunbi, Omolade

Review by: Eric Mokube
Source: Africa Today, Vol. 63, No. 3, Mobilizing Musical Performance and Expressive
Culture in the Ebola 2014 Epidemic (Spring 2017), pp. 116-118
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/africatoday.63.3.14
Accessed: 05-06-2017 15:29 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Africa
Today

This content downloaded from 186.60.183.85 on Mon, 05 Jun 2017 15:29:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Adunbi, Omolade. 2015. OIL WEALTH AND INSURGENCY IN NIGERIA.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 296 pp. $31.79 (paper).

Omolade Adunbis Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria shows how the
desire of the people of the Niger Delta to benefit from the oil produced in
their region is at the core of the political crisis that faces Nigeria and its oil
industry. The dynamics of the crisis in Nigeria, especially in the delta, are
africa TODAY 63(3)

largely centered on the occurrence of oil, the presence of multinational oil

companies, antisocial and undesirable state policies, an array of distinct
minority ethnic groups as the historical inhabitants of the region, and deci-
sively, deficient socioeconomic development despite immense resource-
based wealth.
According to Nigerian history, the origins of the crisis can be traced
to the British colonial era, when British colonial leaders were unwilling to
116

address issues of cohabitation by distinct religious groups and ethnic minori-

ties within a single region. Nigeria since attaining independence, in 1960,
BOOK REVIEWS

has been marred by recurrent political crises, which have resulted in a dys-
functional political and economic systems of governance, usually benefiting
only the political elites in the countys bourgeois economic system.
To neglect the issues of minorities in policy development and imple-
mentation, one can rely on the text to argue that successive postindepen-
dence Nigerian administrations have effectively maintained the historical
balance of power relations, which have undermined the status and ability
of ethnic minorities to access resources in their respective areas. As this
book shows, the delta crisis revolves around contestation by the ethnic
communities of the region, the multinational oil companies, the federal
government, and various social movements and militias that have emerged
from the chaos.
Adunbi shows that the key to this chaos is a legal system that regulates
the exploration of oil, land ownership, governance, ethnic conflict, natural
resource control, and broader issues of ethnic self-determination. Accord-
ing to Adunbi, this bourgeois economy assumes a perfect market and profit
maximization. In the end, he underscores the contradictions of resource
extraction, especially in Africa, and the need for good governance, in which
further commodification of society and market adjustment are seen as a
panacea. His central claim is that land and oil represent an ancestral prom-
ise of wealth to many delta communities. This promise echoes throughout
the region, and the oil pipelines, flow stations, and platforms have come to
symbolize it; however, as readers learn from the book, the complex power
dynamics that result from the struggle for bona fide ownership create depen-
dencies and alliances among NGOs, militants, youth groups, the army, and
corporations, which lead to a shifting alliance structure within the region.
The book is subdivided into seven chapters. Chapters one and two map
Nigerias development paradigm through the politics of oil, chartering the

Africa Today Vol. 63, No. 3 Copyright The Trustees of Indiana University DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.63.3.14

This content downloaded from 186.60.183.85 on Mon, 05 Jun 2017 15:29:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
countrys history from the discovery of the oil and its transformation from an
agrarian economy to one that is highly dependent on oil. The author traces
this transformation to the point that, by 1973, oil accounted for nearly 60
percent of total revenue and just over 80 percent of export earnings (p. 47).
As Nigeria celebrated fifty years of oil exploration, community mem-
bers in the resource enclaves, including the delta, suffered the consequences
of environmental degradation and denial of access to their land (p. 60). The

africa TODAY 63(3)

inability of the nation to spread the wealth to all its citizens, coupled with
the impact of structural adjustment polices that the international monetary
banking systems forced upon the government after the fall in oil prices and
the reduction in oil revenue, led to the emergence of radical and crusading
NGOs and CBOs in the region.
Adunbi reveals ways in which social structures and norms are posi-
tioned as an essential and enduring phenomenon to the communities.

117
For example, he provides a rich unpacking, whereby both the culture and
national politics emerge as dynamic concepts over the region. Subsequent

BOOK REVIEWS
regimes in Nigeria were unable to address such basic provisions of social
services as health care, education, water, energy, markets, roads, and other
necessary infrastructure. The abdication of responsibilities by the different
administrations gave room for NGOs to fill the void. As a result, many
communities perceived the Nigerian nation in alien terms (p. 79).
The foregoing situation prompted NGOs to begin to build the com-
munitys trust by constructing environmental space and by reframing land
rights as intergenerational and as an inheritance. Communities used these
practices to circumvent and challenge the governance of the nation, as NGOs
became skillful in connecting community problems with transnational
networks of human and environmental rights groups and advocating for
confronting economic policies that disempower people. In the midst of the
complex network of actors, NGOs created alternative forms of governance
that did compete equally with each state at regional levels.
Chapters three and four look at community case studies in the delta,
including the history of claims to ownership based upon ancestral prom-
ises made to those communities. Claims to ownership have deepened how
some communities reshape the notion of community and belonging. At this
juncture, Adunbi revisits the narratives of belonging and ownership, as well
as the triangulation of human and environmental rights practices espoused
by the transnational alliances. The delta fits into the landscape and narra-
tive of the oil-rich region. Consequently, some community members have
been transformed into obvious business partners of the multinational oil
corporations.
Chapters five and six examine the activities and organizing modes
of insurgency movements in parts of the delta. Here, Adunbi explores
how insurgents circulate in ways that allow or encourage membership in
transnational human and environmental rights networks. Insurgency move-
ments are one of the strongest forms of organizing against the state and
multinational corporations. Insurgents have been forging new structures of

This content downloaded from 186.60.183.85 on Mon, 05 Jun 2017 15:29:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 governance by occupying creek spaces and claiming legitimate authority.
The creeks in turn have become a platform on which they deliver social
services to the communities in the absence of the authority of state and
regional governments. As a result, quasi-governance structures have been
established to compete with, and sometimes confront, the structures of the
Nigerian nation. Usefully discussed is the fact that insurgents have reshaped
the policies of the creeks in ways anchored to the creeks spirituality, embed-
africa TODAY 63(3)

ded in the ancestral notion of ownership of oil resources. These dynamics

have emboldened militants, some of whom have directly negotiated with
the state or regional governments.
Chapter seven, the final section of the book, explores how militants
and state officials have utilized the spaces created in the creeks to negotiate
differences, eventually to minimize or completely stop the hostility and
gain amnesty for many militants. The delta, as a space or an entity, can be
118

considered a field of political power (p. 233). It is interesting to note in the

book that militants, upon being co-opted by the state government, have
BOOK REVIEWS

become partners of the state, and collaboration with corporations has helped
continue the depredation of delta communities.
Overall, I laud the author for successfully exploring the complexities
of oil and politics in Nigeria by contextualizing oil politics in relation to vio-
lence. He admirably articulates the fact that these oil-rich communities have
been both victims of a predatory state and complacent in their oppression
by corporations, the NGOs and, indeed, the national government. I strongly
recommend Oil Wealth and Insurgency in Nigeria to university libraries,
academic departments, students, and scholars in the fields of African and
international security studies.
Eric Mokube
University of Oregon

This content downloaded from 186.60.183.85 on Mon, 05 Jun 2017 15:29:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms