NATURAL RESOURCE ABUNDANCE, EXPLOITATION AND AGITATION FOR RESOURCE CONTROL IN NIGERIA’S NIGER DELTA: A MARXIAN ANALYSIS
NATURAL RESOURCE ABUNDANCE, EXPLOITATION AND AGITATION FOR RESOURCE CONTROL IN NIGERIA’S NIGER DELTA: A MARXIAN ANALYSIS

Summary/Abstract: Prolonged agitation for resource control in Nigeria’s Niger Delta has attracted increasing attention of academia and policy makers. Key issues are involved-fiscal federalism principles, resource control agitation strategies/intensities and politico-philosophical bases within constitutional and theoretical frameworks, past and present governments’ efforts aimed at resolving agitations by Niger Delta peoples for resource control have been examined from various traditional disciplinary perspectives in social sciences and humanities. This study explains conflicting postures of resources control,and dynamics of the struggle by applying fragments of the revolutionary Marxist ideology/ frameworks comprising Gramscian, Dialectical Materialism and the Frankfort School’s Critical Social and Neo-Marxist (conflict) theoretical perspectives espoused by Lewis Coser and C. Wright Mills. We argue that sections of Nigeria’s laws (the Constitution, and 1978 Land Use Act) that vested absolute land ownership/control authority on Nigeria’s Federal Government, among other obnoxious laws that promote marginalization of particular oppressed sections/strata of Nigeria’s population thereby provoking persistent conflicts, such laws are overdue for amendment. We recommend, among others, that: non-exploitative variety of federalism applied in Scandinavia (Norway), Switzerland, etc. should be implemented in Nigeria.

• Details
• Contents