Oil Violence and Prospect of Fair Justice in the Niger Delta of Nigeria: A Critical Analysis of the Major Social Movements in the Region

The Niger Delta region has witnessed a protracted violence for almost five decades over the issues of environmental degradation, political marginalization and total denial of access to oil wealth from the land. However, this crisis took a new dimension in the early 1990s as oil became a major source of foreign exchange and the derivation formula was changed in favour of the federal government with negative consequences for the local people (the need to maintain constant flow of oil have resulted to gross violation of the local people¡¯s rights by the state and the oil multinationals) especially under the military regimes. The entrenchment of democracy in the late 1990s further escalated the tripartite conflict between the state, oil multinationals and host communities as the complex crisis drew global attention. The formation of Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) in the 1990s to challenge the abuse of human rights over four decades was overwhelmed applauded by the local people of the region. More importantly, MOSOP was the first social movement in the region to have internationalized the plight of the local people while IYC took over from the period when MOSOP had some internal crises that undermined its struggle. Equally, the achievements of MOSOP and IYC have instigated the formation of other social movements in the Niger Delta as a whole. The pressure from these social movements might have accounted for sudden change of policies by the state and the major oil multinationals in the mid 1990s. However, the fundamental question is to what extent the social movements (MOSOP/IYC) and international civil society have been successful with the issue of human rights abuse in the region.