A fragile peace in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region is in tatters after a wave of attacks on pipelines, perpetrated by a new group calling themselves the Niger Delta Avengers, who are demanding a greater share of the country’s petro-dollars.
The Delta is the source of much of Nigeria’s wealth, but the oil industry’s legacy has been one of inequality and environmental damage; the Avengers are the latest in a long line of militant organisations in the region who have resorted to violence to agitate for economic and political disenfranchisement. With social media savvy – until Twitter suspended their account in July – and enough operational capacity to strike at critical infrastructure, they have created a new sense of crisis in a country that is already beset by economic and security concerns.
Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy, and the world’s 13th largest oil producer.
The attacks recall the last major insurgency in the region, by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, which caused major disruptions to the country’s oil production in 2007 and 2008 by attacking infrastructure and kidnapping oil workers. The resumption of violence also highlights the failure of an amnesty programme that was launched in 2009 to try to provide alternatives to militancy.
What the amnesty did was say: handover your ammunition and we’ll basically legalise your skillset – the ability to carry guns
The programme, launched in 2009, was taken up by thousands of fighters, including MEND’s leader, Government Ekpemupolo — known as Tompolo. Former militants were handed monthly subsidies of around $400, and were promised training and employment opportunities.
Some certainly got the latter. After his rehabilitation, Tompolo was awarded contracts by local government and private-sector organisations to provide security for the same pipelines that his group had targeted. Critics called it a ransom. Today he is in front of Nigeria’s anti-corruption watchdog, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, facing charges of money laundering and theft. Local press reports have accused Tompolo of having a hand in the latest violence, a claim both he and the Niger Delta Avengers deny.
“What the amnesty did was say: handover your ammunition and we’ll basically legalise your skillset – the ability to carry guns,” says Manji Cheto, a political analyst at Teneo Intelligence. “So in retrospect, given the context and the desperation of the situation in 2009, it seemed like the least bad option at the time.”
That context was a fall in oil production equivalent to around a quarter of the country’s 2.5 million barrels per day capacity. Oil typically accounts for around a third of the economy, three-quarters of government revenue and at times up to 90 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange, meaning that MEND was able to damage the domestic economy and even jolt international oil markets.
A pair of MEND attacks on Shell and Chevron pipelines in late June 2008 – albeit following on from other events – pushed the price of oil to record heights.
A military campaign to oust MEND was a failure, and alienated many locals, hampering the army’s ability to gather intelligence and deepening a sense of grievance in the region.
Legitimacy deficit
The current president, Muhammadu Buhari, announced in February that the amnesty would be phased out by 2018. In May, he backtracked, saying that it would be “re-engineered”.
Buhari, a former military ruler who reinvented himself as a democrat and stormed to victory in a 2015 election, is a Muslim from the north of Nigeria, and his challenges in the Delta play into long and deeply held prejudices and rivalries in the country. Nigeria’s ethnic and religious divisions are complex, but Buhari has little support in the south – as evidenced by a very poor showing in the region at the ballot box.
As Cheto says: “He definitely is not seen as politically legitimate in the Delta.”
The supply disruption that has resulted from this year’s militancy has added to Nigeria’s existing economic challenges. The collapse in the oil price in 2014-15 pulled the rug out from beneath the country’s decade-long boom. A crippling lack of hard currency has hit importers of staple goods and pushed up prices for consumers and businesses.
The Central Bank of Nigeria spent billions on trying to keep the local currency, the naira, stable at the fixed exchange rate of around 200 to the dollar, even when black market rates were as high as 350. It put in place controls to limit how many dollars could be taken out of the country, and imposed tight restrictions on bureaux de change. These measures spooked investors in its stock markets and in government bonds, causing them to bail out. In June, the CBN finally yielded and devalued the currency.
The government’s lack of resources means it lacks options for fixing both the short-term security problems in the Delta, and the longer-term need to formulate and execute a coherent development plan for the Delta.
“There is sympathy for what [the Niger Delta Avengers] talk about, because people in the Delta have been disenfranchised for decades. Now, if the government were to lay out a plan with timelines and a budget on Niger Delta development, then I think that starts to delegitimise the NDA’s voice,” Cheto says. “Given the practical realities of Nigeria’s fiscal situation, it’s going to be very difficult.”
Main image: PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images
