Federalism, political power, and the economic power game: conflict over access to petroleum resources in Nigeria

There is hardly any natural resource that has generated so much political and economic conflict as petroleum. One form of conflict which has received very little attention is the struggle for control between the producing regions on the one hand and the state and the nonproducing areas on the other in multiethnic federations. This paper is an examination of this conflict in Nigeria. In order to provide a framework for the analysis, theoretical issues on the state and the experiences of other federations are examined. The setting for the conflict in Nigeria is the situation where the resource, which is the mainstay of the economy, is available only in areas whose ethnic groups have little or no access to or control of political power. Unlike in other federations such as the USA and Australia, Nigeria's petroleum resources are much more accessible to the central government and the nonproducing regions than the producing areas. A controversy has thus emerged. One school argues that the producing areas should have exclusive right to the resources whereas another assigns this exclusive right to the federal government. A third view is that the producing areas should have more, though nonexciusive, rights and a fourth argues that the federal government should have more rights. The current pattern of access has generated a lot of dissent in the producing areas whose inhabitants assert that the pattern is a reflection of the majority ethnic groups' bid to oppress the minority groups. Such protests include advocacy-based protest, civil disobedience, sabotage and armed struggle.