Cutting Sustenance from the Margins of Oil Extraction: Igbo's Creative Engagement with Distribution and Privatization of Oil Wealth in the Niger Delta

The post-Nigeria-Biafra war reforms centralized the collection and distribution of the Niger Delta's oil wealth to set up channels through which the oil wealth is distributed and privatized - outlets of oil wealth - that mainly privilege the political office holders, international entrepreneurs and their contractors (the petro-elites). Those who are less favoured in this process deploy different techniques to gain some share of the oil wealth. Kidnapping for ransom, occupying oil installations, the extortion of protection money and manipulation of cases and compensations are some examples of the techniques. These techniques can involve the application of coercion, or armed violence. There are also techniques that do not involve coercion or armed violence, which are favoured by actors in the Igbo-speaking parts of the Delta. Rather than being coercive, the latter creatively engage the outlets of oil wealth, by modifying their traditional practices and alliances. In one instance, the outlet of oil wealth engaged creatively is the compensation paid for land expropriated for oil business. When disputes arising from the distribution of money paid as compensation by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) became a court case, the members of Imosoa, one of the villages involved in the dispute, resorted to throwing a fishing festival (they previously celebrated exclusively) open to the public. Anyone who could pay the stipulated fee could participate. The transformative effect of this was triggered when the latter village introduced sponsorship of every new version of the festival to raise money to fund the court proceedings of the compensation dispute. Thereafter, rather than a gathering of the descendants and associates of Osoa, who is linked with the discovery of the Ịkụazụ lake where the festival is celebrated, each new version of the festival is considered instead as an innovation. Hence, it can be appreciated and supported with money, in the same way that every other good assigned with commodity quality can be treated. The practice of appreciating and encouraging an innovation with money, can be traced to two Igbo traditional practices. The first is compensating a toddler, whose first set of teeth is acknowledged with a fowl by the first public announcer (ile eze). The second is the practice of spraying money on an entertainer, whose display is spectacular (itu ego). But, through the fundraising mechanism of launching/sponsoring popularized by the Igbo town unions, a hometown association that organizes for self-help and community development from the middle of the 20th century onwards, the practice of transforming goods into an innovation, hence capable of being launched or sponsored, has penetrated all aspects of Igbo socio-economic life. The transformation of a traditional festival which has enabled the Imosoa village to sustain their access to oil rent, is an example of how widespread the practice has become. In another instance, the outlet of oil wealth engaged creatively is the creation of autonomous communities. The latter is a sub-federal unit that engages with the oil companies and state's special agencies for the development of oil producing communities. When the traditional ruler of Ebobi misappropriated and politicized rents paid to the entire community, a set of university undergraduates rallied with some elders with whom they shared an identity to reconstitute themselves into a new autonomous community. This reconstitution was facilitated by histories of migration and settlement that were previously stored as symbolic value. Such symbolic values are now deployed for accessing oil wealth and benefits, which will now accrue directly to them as members of a new autonomous community. Thus, the story of the Niger Delta is not only about elite appropriation of oil wealth and armed struggle for resource control. Actors in the Delta also creatively engage the formal structures established by the dominant actors for oil wealth distribution and privatization, without having to be coercive or engage in armed violence. Scholars have also to pay attention to these forms of bricolage in the resource extraction zones, which the poststructuralist understanding of space-place relations in relational terms helps to engage with. By so doing, analysts can account adequately for the form of social configuration that emerges in the Niger Delta, where investment in oil extraction gains in intensity. So, analysts can also discern alternative ways of organizing the economy.

Publication year:2018

Accessibility:Open