ASSESSMENT OF NIGERIA’S CURRENT INSECURITY CHALLENGES (A CASE STUDY OF NIGER DELTA MILITANCY (2006-2016)
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Nigeria as a country is blessed with abundance of mineral resources but the issue of insecurity is growing deep into the Nigerian economy. Before the production of oil commercially in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria; that was in 1958 or there about; this region of the country has been of immense benefit in sustaining a large number of the Nigeria population if not the entire country. This region of the country is blessed with good fisheries industry for commercial purposes according to (Afinotan, 2009). For ages the people of Niger Delta were contented with farming, fishing and other activities like pottery, commercial activities like mat- making, hunting etc. About fly years ago, that was around 1956 in Oloibiri the shell petroleum development company of Nigeria discovered crude oil in this region of Nigeria (Aaron and George, 2010).
Oil has been the major source of income from foreign exchange earnings; contributing to about 90% of the Nigeria economy by the federal government of Nigeria. Surprisingly, the projection of the Nigeria constitutional development, the socio-economic development and other form of class formation have really been influenced and directed by politics of oil according to Owugah, 1999.
The various states in Nigeria sees the oil from this region as blessing to the country but the people of Niger Delta sees it as a curse to their land. This is simply because of the continuous massive exploitation of crude oil from this region which in return creates socio-economic and environmental problems. The major problem here is the way the Nigerian state and the collaboration oil giants in the country have neglected this issues for a long time (Omotola, 2006). Concerning the issues of this state of affairs (1999:106) observed that this so called oil that brought much wealth to the nation as a whole and those power only ended up bringing negativity inform of poverty, disease, death and finally loss of livelihood to the people of the Nigeria Delta. The continuous occurrences were what led to the formation of pan- Niger Delta militia group; this movement for the emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) came up in the year 2006. The violent dimension started during the struggle for local control of the Nigeria’s crude oil. Apart from the so called MEND that clearly appear to articulated grievances such as environmental insecurity and the socio- economic marginalization of the people of the people of the Niger Delta, there came another group by name sundry groups came into place in the Niger Delta. Most of this group was not coming up because of the insecurities in the Niger Delta region; most of them were coming up to for the purpose of criminality and other crimes
