CULLED FROM THISDAY PAPERS,9-23-2008
To demonstrate its resolve to tackle the problems of the Niger Delta region, the Federal Government recently set up a 40-member technical committee and also created a separate Ministry for Niger Delta. Ademola Adeyemo looks at the palliatives which have been greeted with criticism and hostility especially by the militants
The vexed issue of the Niger Delta crisis has continued to generate tension in the country giving its potential danger to the security and continued existence of the nation. It has however continued to receive government attention at least in the last six months. First, the Federal Government constituted a 40-Member Niger Delta Technical Committee to collate past reports on the Niger Delta issue and advice the Federal Government on the way forward.According to the guidelines, the task ahead of the committee would not attract new research, field trips or lengthy debates but that the bulk of the information would be found in existing commission reports, suggestions, recommendations and position papers. Speaking while inaugurating the committee, Vice President Goodluck Jonathan said the Federal Government was determined to achieve a fair and holistic resolution of the Niger Delta crisis. According to him, government would support the people of the Niger Delta and all people of goodwill in the effort to bring smiles on the faces of all citizens. “The resolution of the crisis in the Niger Delta cannot be undertaken outside the region and its people. The initiative of a technical committee on the resolution of the crisis in the Niger Delta was a culmination of consultations with the people of the region, the committee was expected to collate, review and distill the various reports, suggestions and recommendations on the region from all sources. Wherever a report on Niger Delta exists and you can reach it, I urge you to ferret it out, examine it as thoroughly as you can and make suggestions for government's necessary and urgent action,” he had said.At its inaugural meeting the committee elected former President of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), Mr. Ledum Mitee, as its chairman, while Nkoyo Toyo was elected as secretary.Other members of the 40-man committee are Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, E. C. Adiele, Tony Esu, Nduese Essien, Grace Ekong, Peter King, Anderson Eseimokumo, Lawrence Ekpebu and Austin Ikein as members. Youpele Banigo, Anthony Ani, Ukandi Gabriel Ogar, Edor Obi retired colonel, Omofume Onoge, B. I. C. Ijeoma, Isaac Jemide, Abel Dafioghor, Benard Jamaho, Sam Amuka Pemu, Stella Omu, Ben Bouegha, Julius Ihonvbere, Peter Ebhalemen, Charles Edosomhan a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), E. M. Umezurike, Godswill Ihetu, and Cyril Anyanwu, were also named members of the committee. Others are Sam Amadi and D. I. Kekemeke, Olusola Oke, Wole Ohunayo a retired colonel, Tonye Princewill, Magnus Njei Abe, Chibuzor Ugowoha, Tony Uranta, Anyakwe Nsirimovu, Timi Alaibe and Atei Beredugo. Prior to the establishment of the committee, government had set up a steering committee of the Niger Delta Summit and appointed Professor Ibrahim Gambari, United Nations Undersecretary as Chairman .Gambari’s appointment was ,however, met with stiff opposition from the Niger Delta leaders who accused him of expressing anti-Niger Delta views during the late General Sani Abacha’s regime. Gambari eventually offered to step aside from the summit, saying that he had become the issue as opposed to the issues the summit was to address. Government had no choice but to even change the nomenclature of the proposed summit to dialogue as some people in the Niger Delta were opposed to the idea, expressing reservations that it was going to be a jamboree. Soon after, government went another mile by announcing the creation of the Ministry of Niger Delta.However, the two steps taken by the Federal Government were received with mixed feelings by the militant groups in the area. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) rejected the government’s 40-man peace committee saying it "is orchestrated and lacks integrity." MEND while dismissing the composition of the 40-man committee described it as "the appetizer on the menu of another banquet of deceit orchestrated by an insincere government to give it a semblance of integrity." The group believed that peace in the Niger Delta would be determined from the mangrove creeks and not from air-conditioned rooms in Abuja. It described the exercise as putting the cart before the horse. MEND also gave conditions for it to embrace dialogue saying that it will only listen to anyone if its detained leader, Henry Okah, is released. "Without the release of Henry Okah, no right thinking militant that has evaded capture can trust that the government wants genuine peace. Treating those in its custody differently from those that are in the creek is sheer hypocrisy. Henry Okah must be a part of the process and not an agenda for debate." MEND said. The rejection of the committee by MEND was further corroborated by the leader of the Niger Delta Youth Peace Movement, Mr. Moses Siloko Siasia who claimed that the exclusion of youths from the committee makes nonsense of the whole effort and proves that the nation has not learnt anything yet. . Lending his voice to the composition of the committee, Siasia added that it was wrong for the committee to meet and decide the fate of youths who were excluded, saying it violated the agreement that was reached with the Vice President and may not augur well for the committee. "It was agreed that ethnic nationalities should be represented in the committee and that nominations of youths should be made and elders of the region consulted but none of those things were done. "How can they decide the fate of the youths without their input? It is the youths that are carrying arms and they are excluded so how do you think the problem will end", he asked. Outside the Niger Delta region,the federal government’s gesture has also attracted criticism, Lagos lawyer, Mr. Festus Keyamo, expressed reservations about government‘s intention. According to him, government‘s move was more of a diversionary tactic, aimed at getting the people to believe that something positive was in the offing.Keyamo said, ”Nigerians should come out and condemn the Federal Government for creating the Ministry of the Niger Delta. It is nothing but a diversionary tactic employed by government to deceive the people that they were doing something. The ministry cannot achieve anything.The Transition Monitoring Group also expressed its misgivings over the creation of a Ministry of Niger Delta, recalling government‘s legendary record of stalling its own efforts.To the TMG, the creation of the ministry is a jamboree. The organization said the problem of the Niger Delta goes beyond the creation of a ministry, as it believed that the existence of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC)had done little to douse the tension in the region.TMG President, Mr. Moshood Erubami, described the creation of the ministry as “ a preventive step” which according to him, was taken in another direction. Erubami said the issue of the Niger Delta was economic, political and justice, and not just a matter of creating jobs for the boys, such as the replication of the NDDC. ”The problem is just to provide political will, and if the 40-member technical committee had been empanelled, why do they have to create a ministry and not wait for the recommendation of the committee.”On his part, ActionAids‘ Country Director, Dr. Otive Igbuzor, who observed that previous efforts had made good policy prescriptions for the development of the Niger Delta, without achieving much, called for the immediate drawing up of a marshal plan for the transformation of the area.Such a plan, according to Igbuzor, should have concrete things to be done; who is to do them; when, how and at what cost.He also listed the need for a specific development agency for the Niger Delta people with development experts and technocrats as its leadership. He noted that the drawbacks of previous interventions by governments was the setting up of agencies such as the Niger Delta Development Board, the Oil and Minerals Producing Area Development Commission and the NDDC which were all political intervention agencies, but were not devoid of politics, especially in the appointment and conduct of principal officers, and in the operation of the agencies.Of course, Igbuzor‘s observations come in handy in explaining recent rumpus in the NDDC with what many have described as the ridiculous level to which struggle for power attained.Surprisingly, to demonstrate its opposition to the government gestures in setting up the peace committee and the creation of a separate Ministry for the Niger Delta affairs, the militants resumed hostility last week declaring a full-scale war in the area. Spokesman of the MEND, Jomo Gbomo, said last week that creating a ministry was not akin to the coming of the much-awaited messiah but that the group would only believe that the government was sincere when it eventually restructures the country with true federalism.Many also believe that despite the criticisms that have trailed the creation of the ministry, the Yar‘Adua administration, by bringing into reality a ministry to cater for the long-neglected region, has taken what could amount to a giant leap for his administration and the country, if properly executed.The fact that many have started making recommendations on who should be made minister is also considered a clear pointer that the exercise would not be allowed to run free of the politics that many said was the undoing of past efforts.The President of the Ijaw Media Forum, Mr. Asu Beks, said that the creation of the ministry and the setting up of the technical committee was laudable and an indication of President Yar’Adua’s goodwill, but he such good intention must be matched with actions that are palliatives to the people of the region. “Nigeria has never lacked ideas, but it is that of implementation. But I feel personally that the President has a lot of goodwill.“All we are saying is that the ministry should be located in the region itself, and should only have a liaison office in Abuja. It should be an interventionist ministry and what Mr. President should further show is sincerity, by not making it a Yoruba, Hausa and Ibo affair.“To take off effectively, the President should dissolve the board of the NDDC, so that they would not come and pollute the Ministry of Niger Delta while our own people should be appointed to man all the strategic positions.”However despite the opposition, one thing that cannot be taken away from the present administration is its genuine intention to bring development to the Niger Delta, many people are convinced that indeed the President means well.But the question remains,palliatives for who?
Tuesday 23 September 2008
Report on Niger Delta
Fuelling the Niger Delta Crisis
Africa Report N°118 28 September 2006
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Less than a year before Nigeria holds its third national elections since the end of military rule in 1999, tensions are running high in the southern Niger Delta. A number of militant groups have begun allying themselves to local politicians with electoral aspirations. These groups and others continue to use legitimate grievances, such as poverty, environmental destruction and government corruption, to justify increasingly damaging attacks against government and oil industry targets. Removing the incentives for violence will require granting a degree of resource control to local communities. Engaging Delta groups in sustained, transparent dialogue also remains critical to finding a solution to the militant puzzle. Equally important, credible development efforts must be supported and stiff penalties for corruption imposed upon those who embezzle and squander funds.
Crisis Group’s first report on the Niger Delta[1] examined the historical and societal underpinnings of the growing insurgency. This report focuses on more recent developments. It examines the often hazy overlap between the militant Niger Delta cause and criminal and political motives, and identifies the steps required to defuse the conflict.
Demands from militants have included the creation of additional states for Ijaws, amenities and jobs for rural communities, contracts and oil concessions for faction leaders and even calls for independence. The spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the most vocal and best organised of the militant organisations to emerge in 2006, says his group’s goal is to achieve resource control concessions or wreak “anarchy”.
Attacks since December 2005, including a spate of oil worker kidnappings, have at times forced oil production shutdowns of up to 800,000 barrels per day, threatening Nigerian government plans to nearly double production to four million barrels a day by 2010. Only some of those production losses have been offset by recent offshore developments. Two companies with foreign shareholders signalled in August 2006 that they would be withdrawing from the Niger Delta due to security concerns.
The most potent weapon in the militants’ arsenal is the growing anger among the region’s twenty million inhabitants. In more than seven years of civilian rule, functionaries at the local, state and federal levels are perceived to have failed to deliver tangible economic benefits for impoverished residents. Militant groups have largely ignored the incremental administrative reforms begun since 2003 and are succeeding in drawing upon anger against a pervasively corrupt system of governance inherited from the military era. Militant groups have managed to win sufficiently broad popular support to operate openly in many communities and have not been weakened by the imprisonment since September 2005 of publicity-seeking warlord Alhaji Dokubo-Asari. To date, militants have not been sufficiently organised or united to mount a viable separatist insurgency. Most fighters would concede that winning independence for the Niger Delta remains highly unlikely, although support for such a movement is growing.
Community groups in the Niger Delta complain they have few incentives to protect oil infrastructure from militant and criminal groups. For impoverished locals, government officials and even oil company staff, oil theft offers significant rewards. Since a government crackdown on oil theft began in mid-2005, piracy and kidnappings have been on the rise. Oil facilities and workers are difficult to defend, nowhere more so than in the Niger Delta’s tangle of swamps and rivers.
Environmental claims are increasingly incorporated into the rhetoric of insurgency and need to be independently addressed. Locals have long complained that spilled oil from deteriorating decades-old pipelines has devastated fishing, although overfishing is also to blame. Oil companies insist that the vast majority of spills that have occurred in recent years are the result of sabotage by oil thieves and other groups trying to extort compensation payments.
National elections scheduled for 21 April 2007 are causing major concern, especially in the Niger Delta. A repetition of the widespread ballot fraud of 2003 risks aggravating an already tense political climate. Many Nigerians fear President Olusegun Obasanjo’s anti-corruption campaign launched in 2003 may be too little, too late. Others have dismissed reforms as a weapon wielded against political enemies of the country’s ruling elite. Although some Western analysts have touted the merits of a recent package of promised infrastructure development in the Niger Delta under the umbrella of a centrally-controlled Consolidated Council on Social and Economic Development, few people in the Delta have faith that this will be any more effective than the failed, federally-controlled development mechanisms of the past.
Resolving the Niger Delta crisis will require far greater commitment on the part of the federal government and corporate stakeholders in ensuring the oil industry operates fairly and transparently in the region, with visible benefits to the local population. Without serious and sustainable reforms, all parties stand to lose.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the Nigerian Federal Government:
1. Engage in negotiations with a broad-based delegation of Niger Deltans from the region’s ethnic councils, religious groups and other civil society organisations. The terms of reference for the talks should focus on expanded local resource control as called for by the Special Committee on Oil Producing Areas in 2002; further, the venue for negotiations should be a location within the Niger Delta to allow for greater transparency and local participation, and if talks need to break off into smaller groups to address problems of individual communities, efforts should be taken to keep the process transparent.
2. Institute, while this dialogue is proceeding, a derivation formula of between 25 and 50 per cent of mineral resources, including oil and gas, to all Nigerian states, and phase this in over five years in order to avoid budgetary shock to non-oil producing states and to encourage exploration and production of other mineral resources throughout Nigeria.
3. In the short to medium term, until state and local governments are demonstrably representative of and answerable to Niger Delta communities, allocate any additional monetary resources beyond current statutory state and local government payments directly to locally-controlled foundations willing to accept the assistance and oversight of qualified, independent, international development professionals.
4. Repeal or reform legislation such as the Petroleum Act and the Land Use Act that effectively deprive local residents of an ownership stake in land and resources.
5. Consider a constitutional provision to abolish criminal immunity for the president and state governors, and encourage law enforcement bodies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to prosecute cases of local and state government corruption.
To Nigeria’s Senate and House of Representatives:
6. Pass the proposed Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) bill to entrench recent oil and other mineral industry reforms.
To the State Governments of the Niger Delta:
7. Implement economic reforms and ensure that state government allocations are spent on projects that focus on health services and safe drinking water, education, job training and transportation.
8. Where state and local government development capacity is lacking, partner with reputable development professionals who have a demonstrated commitment to community participation in planning and implementation.
To the UN, International Community and Donor Governments:
9. Provide resources for and support an independent environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the Niger Delta as well as a credible, independent judicial mechanism to adjudicate compensation claims, taking steps to ensure that the credibility of such an environmental assessment is not damaged by funding from or association with government and energy companies, and that compensation is distributed transparently in a manner that benefits communities rather than “benefit captors” such as politicians and militant and traditional leaders.
10. Press the Nigerian government to reform legislation such as the Petroleum Act and the Land Use Act that effectively deny local control of resources.
11. Discourage heavy-handed military operations and and encourage negotiations between the federal government and Niger Delta groups.
12. Make budget and expenditure transparency a condition for aid to federal, state and local governments and end relationships with local and state administrations that have failed to address corruption.
13. Offer the good offices of a neutral country without oil interests in Nigeria to mediate between the federal and state governments and Niger Delta parties, based on the proposal already accepted in principle by several Delta activist and militant groups.
To the Energy Companies:
14. Make individual company project environmental impact assessment (EIA) studies more transparent and accessible to community groups. Obtain community assent before proceeding with infrastructure and other developments.
15. Abide by the rulings of independent arbitration and court decisions looking into environmental claims. Both the federal government and companies should ensure that they pay their share of pollution compensation awards.
16. Encourage corporate transparency by releasing detailed, public reports of expenditures, including costs of development and payments to governments, community groups and contractors.
17. End illicit and semi-illicit payments to both militants and paramilitary security forces deployed to protect oil installations.
18. Abolish the host-community system of payments to communities in favour of a system that deals with communities more holistically through ethnic and regional councils.
19. Refashion joint venture partnerships to include local participation and ownership and, to this end, enter into talks with government and local groups.
To the Energy Companies’ Home Countries:
20. Legislate to require companies with overseas operations to publicly disclose all payments to foreign governments. This initiative should be synchronised through the Group of Eight to provide additional credibility to extractive transparency efforts in developing nations.
Dakar/Brussels, 28 September 2006
[1] Crisis Group Africa Briefing N°115, The Swamps of Insurgency: Nigeria’s Delta Unrest, 3 August 2006.»
Africa Report N°118 28 September 2006
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Less than a year before Nigeria holds its third national elections since the end of military rule in 1999, tensions are running high in the southern Niger Delta. A number of militant groups have begun allying themselves to local politicians with electoral aspirations. These groups and others continue to use legitimate grievances, such as poverty, environmental destruction and government corruption, to justify increasingly damaging attacks against government and oil industry targets. Removing the incentives for violence will require granting a degree of resource control to local communities. Engaging Delta groups in sustained, transparent dialogue also remains critical to finding a solution to the militant puzzle. Equally important, credible development efforts must be supported and stiff penalties for corruption imposed upon those who embezzle and squander funds.
Crisis Group’s first report on the Niger Delta[1] examined the historical and societal underpinnings of the growing insurgency. This report focuses on more recent developments. It examines the often hazy overlap between the militant Niger Delta cause and criminal and political motives, and identifies the steps required to defuse the conflict.
Demands from militants have included the creation of additional states for Ijaws, amenities and jobs for rural communities, contracts and oil concessions for faction leaders and even calls for independence. The spokesman for the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the most vocal and best organised of the militant organisations to emerge in 2006, says his group’s goal is to achieve resource control concessions or wreak “anarchy”.
Attacks since December 2005, including a spate of oil worker kidnappings, have at times forced oil production shutdowns of up to 800,000 barrels per day, threatening Nigerian government plans to nearly double production to four million barrels a day by 2010. Only some of those production losses have been offset by recent offshore developments. Two companies with foreign shareholders signalled in August 2006 that they would be withdrawing from the Niger Delta due to security concerns.
The most potent weapon in the militants’ arsenal is the growing anger among the region’s twenty million inhabitants. In more than seven years of civilian rule, functionaries at the local, state and federal levels are perceived to have failed to deliver tangible economic benefits for impoverished residents. Militant groups have largely ignored the incremental administrative reforms begun since 2003 and are succeeding in drawing upon anger against a pervasively corrupt system of governance inherited from the military era. Militant groups have managed to win sufficiently broad popular support to operate openly in many communities and have not been weakened by the imprisonment since September 2005 of publicity-seeking warlord Alhaji Dokubo-Asari. To date, militants have not been sufficiently organised or united to mount a viable separatist insurgency. Most fighters would concede that winning independence for the Niger Delta remains highly unlikely, although support for such a movement is growing.
Community groups in the Niger Delta complain they have few incentives to protect oil infrastructure from militant and criminal groups. For impoverished locals, government officials and even oil company staff, oil theft offers significant rewards. Since a government crackdown on oil theft began in mid-2005, piracy and kidnappings have been on the rise. Oil facilities and workers are difficult to defend, nowhere more so than in the Niger Delta’s tangle of swamps and rivers.
Environmental claims are increasingly incorporated into the rhetoric of insurgency and need to be independently addressed. Locals have long complained that spilled oil from deteriorating decades-old pipelines has devastated fishing, although overfishing is also to blame. Oil companies insist that the vast majority of spills that have occurred in recent years are the result of sabotage by oil thieves and other groups trying to extort compensation payments.
National elections scheduled for 21 April 2007 are causing major concern, especially in the Niger Delta. A repetition of the widespread ballot fraud of 2003 risks aggravating an already tense political climate. Many Nigerians fear President Olusegun Obasanjo’s anti-corruption campaign launched in 2003 may be too little, too late. Others have dismissed reforms as a weapon wielded against political enemies of the country’s ruling elite. Although some Western analysts have touted the merits of a recent package of promised infrastructure development in the Niger Delta under the umbrella of a centrally-controlled Consolidated Council on Social and Economic Development, few people in the Delta have faith that this will be any more effective than the failed, federally-controlled development mechanisms of the past.
Resolving the Niger Delta crisis will require far greater commitment on the part of the federal government and corporate stakeholders in ensuring the oil industry operates fairly and transparently in the region, with visible benefits to the local population. Without serious and sustainable reforms, all parties stand to lose.
RECOMMENDATIONS
To the Nigerian Federal Government:
1. Engage in negotiations with a broad-based delegation of Niger Deltans from the region’s ethnic councils, religious groups and other civil society organisations. The terms of reference for the talks should focus on expanded local resource control as called for by the Special Committee on Oil Producing Areas in 2002; further, the venue for negotiations should be a location within the Niger Delta to allow for greater transparency and local participation, and if talks need to break off into smaller groups to address problems of individual communities, efforts should be taken to keep the process transparent.
2. Institute, while this dialogue is proceeding, a derivation formula of between 25 and 50 per cent of mineral resources, including oil and gas, to all Nigerian states, and phase this in over five years in order to avoid budgetary shock to non-oil producing states and to encourage exploration and production of other mineral resources throughout Nigeria.
3. In the short to medium term, until state and local governments are demonstrably representative of and answerable to Niger Delta communities, allocate any additional monetary resources beyond current statutory state and local government payments directly to locally-controlled foundations willing to accept the assistance and oversight of qualified, independent, international development professionals.
4. Repeal or reform legislation such as the Petroleum Act and the Land Use Act that effectively deprive local residents of an ownership stake in land and resources.
5. Consider a constitutional provision to abolish criminal immunity for the president and state governors, and encourage law enforcement bodies such as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to prosecute cases of local and state government corruption.
To Nigeria’s Senate and House of Representatives:
6. Pass the proposed Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) bill to entrench recent oil and other mineral industry reforms.
To the State Governments of the Niger Delta:
7. Implement economic reforms and ensure that state government allocations are spent on projects that focus on health services and safe drinking water, education, job training and transportation.
8. Where state and local government development capacity is lacking, partner with reputable development professionals who have a demonstrated commitment to community participation in planning and implementation.
To the UN, International Community and Donor Governments:
9. Provide resources for and support an independent environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the Niger Delta as well as a credible, independent judicial mechanism to adjudicate compensation claims, taking steps to ensure that the credibility of such an environmental assessment is not damaged by funding from or association with government and energy companies, and that compensation is distributed transparently in a manner that benefits communities rather than “benefit captors” such as politicians and militant and traditional leaders.
10. Press the Nigerian government to reform legislation such as the Petroleum Act and the Land Use Act that effectively deny local control of resources.
11. Discourage heavy-handed military operations and and encourage negotiations between the federal government and Niger Delta groups.
12. Make budget and expenditure transparency a condition for aid to federal, state and local governments and end relationships with local and state administrations that have failed to address corruption.
13. Offer the good offices of a neutral country without oil interests in Nigeria to mediate between the federal and state governments and Niger Delta parties, based on the proposal already accepted in principle by several Delta activist and militant groups.
To the Energy Companies:
14. Make individual company project environmental impact assessment (EIA) studies more transparent and accessible to community groups. Obtain community assent before proceeding with infrastructure and other developments.
15. Abide by the rulings of independent arbitration and court decisions looking into environmental claims. Both the federal government and companies should ensure that they pay their share of pollution compensation awards.
16. Encourage corporate transparency by releasing detailed, public reports of expenditures, including costs of development and payments to governments, community groups and contractors.
17. End illicit and semi-illicit payments to both militants and paramilitary security forces deployed to protect oil installations.
18. Abolish the host-community system of payments to communities in favour of a system that deals with communities more holistically through ethnic and regional councils.
19. Refashion joint venture partnerships to include local participation and ownership and, to this end, enter into talks with government and local groups.
To the Energy Companies’ Home Countries:
20. Legislate to require companies with overseas operations to publicly disclose all payments to foreign governments. This initiative should be synchronised through the Group of Eight to provide additional credibility to extractive transparency efforts in developing nations.
Dakar/Brussels, 28 September 2006
[1] Crisis Group Africa Briefing N°115, The Swamps of Insurgency: Nigeria’s Delta Unrest, 3 August 2006.»
Wednesday 10 September 2008
NIGERIA HISTORY OF NIGER DELTA CRISIS
- Conflict in the Niger Delta arose in the early 1990s due to tensions between the foreign oil corporations and a number of the Niger Delta's minority ethnic groups who felt they were being exploited, particularly the Ogoni as well as the Ijaw in the late 1990s. Ethnic and political unrest has continued throughout the 1990s and persists as of 2007 despite the conversion to democracy and the election of the Obasanjo government in 1999. Competition for oil wealth has fueled violence between innumerable ethnic groups, causing the militarization of nearly the entire region by ethnic militia groups as well as Nigerian military and police forces (notably the Nigerian Mobile Police). Victims of crimes are fearful of seeking justice for crimes committed against them because of growing "impunity from prosecution for individuals responsible for serious human rights abuses, [which] has created a devastating cycle of increasing conflict and violence".[citation needed] The regional and ethnic conflicts are so numerous that fully detailing each is impossible and impractical. However, there have been a number of major confrontations that deserve elaboration.
Map of Nigeria numerically showing states typically considered part of the Niger Delta region: 1. Abia, 2. Akwa Ibom, 3. Bayelsa, 4. Cross River, 5. Delta, 6. Edo, 7.Imo, 8. Ondo, 9. Rivers Click to view
Nigeria, after nearly four decades of oil production, had by the early 1990s become almost completely dependent on petroleum extraction economically, generating 25% of its GDP (this has since risen to 40% as of 2000). Despite the vast wealth created by petroleum, the benefits have been slow to trickle down to the majority of the population, who since the 1960s have increasingly abandoned their traditional agricultural practices. Annual production of both cash and food crops dropped significantly in the latter decades of 20th century, cocoa production dropped by 43% (Nigeria was the world's largest cocoa exporter in 1960), rubber dropped by 29%, cotton by 65%, and groundnuts by 64%.[1] In spite of the large number of skilled, well-paid Nigerians who have been employed by the oil corporations, the majority of Nigerians and most especially the people of the Niger Delta states and the far north have become poorer since the 1960s.[citation needed]
The Delta region has a steadily growing population estimated to be over 30 million people as of 2005, accounting for more than 23% of Nigeria's total population. The population density is also among the highest in the world with 265 people per kilometre-squared (reference NDDC). This population is expanding at a rapid 3% per year and the oil capital, Port Harcourt, along with other large towns are growing quickly. Poverty and urbanization in Nigeria are on the rise, and official corruption is considered a fact of life. The resultant scenario is one in which there is urbanization but no accompanying economic growth to provide jobs. This has ironically forced the growing populace to begin destroying the ecosystem that they require to sustain themselves.[1]
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