IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v38y2010i11p1657-1666.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Do Ethnic Militias Perpetuate in Nigeria? A Micro-level Perspective on the Oodua People's Congress

Author

Listed:
  • Guichaoua, Yvan

Abstract

Summary The paper discusses the recently promoted view that organized insurgent violence should either be conducted by activists bonded together by social capital ties or self-interested quasi-mercenaries, depending on the type of financial resources available to the group. We contrast this perspective with the study of an ethnic Nigerian militia, the Oodua People's Congress (OPC). It appears that the success of this militia over time was jointly sustained by important preexisting social connections and numerous opportunities for economic gains. The perpetuation of OPC, we argue, is ensured by a "moral economy" whose members enjoy self-insurance in an environment perceived as unsafe.

Suggested Citation

  • Guichaoua, Yvan, 2010. "How Do Ethnic Militias Perpetuate in Nigeria? A Micro-level Perspective on the Oodua People's Congress," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 1657-1666, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:38:y:2010:i:11:p:1657-1666
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-750X(10)00050-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Macartan Humphreys, 2005. "Natural Resources, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 49(4), pages 508-537, August.
    2. Collier, Paul & Hoeffler, Anke, 1998. "On Economic Causes of Civil War," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 50(4), pages 563-573, October.
    3. William Reno, 2002. "The Politics of Insurgency in Collapsing States," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 33(5), pages 837-858, November.
    4. Avinash Dixit, 2003. "On Modes of Economic Governance," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(2), pages 449-481, March.
    5. Mr. Ehtisham Ahmad & Mr. Raju J Singh, 2003. "Political Economy of Oil-Revenue Sharing in a Developing Country: Illustrations from Nigeria," IMF Working Papers 2003/016, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Laurence Iannaccone & Eli Berman, 2006. "Religious extremism: The good, the bad, and the deadly," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 128(1), pages 109-129, July.
    7. Yvan Guichaoua, 2009. "Self-determination group or extra-legal governance agency? The multifaceted nature of the Oodua people's congress in Nigeria," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(4), pages 520-533.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Paul Mosley, 2013. "Two Africas? Why Africa’s ‘Growth Miracle’ is barely reducing poverty," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 19113, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    2. Turnbull, Megan, 2021. "When armed groups refuse to carry out election violence: Evidence from Nigeria," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    3. Nina von Uexkull & Marco d’Errico & Julius Jackson, 2020. "Drought, Resilience, and Support for Violence: Household Survey Evidence from DR Congo," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 64(10), pages 1994-2021, November.
    4. Christiana Parreira, 2021. "Power politics: Armed non-state actors and the capture of public electricity in post-invasion Baghdad," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 58(4), pages 749-762, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yvan Guichaoua, 2009. "How Do Ethnic Militias Perpetuate in Nigeria? A Micro-level Perspective on the Oodua People’s Congress," Research Working Papers 19, MICROCON - A Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conflict.
    2. Kjetil Bjorvatn & Alireza Naghavi, 2010. "Rent seekers in rentier states: When greed brings peace," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 039, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    3. Elisabeth Gilmore & Nils Petter Gleditsch & Päivi Lujala & Jan Ketil Rod, 2005. "Conflict Diamonds: A New Dataset," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 22(3), pages 257-272, July.
    4. Stoop, Nik & Verpoorten, Marijke & van der Windt, Peter, 2019. "Artisanal or industrial conflict minerals? Evidence from Eastern Congo," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 660-674.
    5. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2017. "A critical survey of the resource curse literature through the appropriability lens," CEPN Working Papers 2017-14, Centre d'Economie de l'Université de Paris Nord.
    6. Vusal Musayev, 2016. "Externalities in Military Spending and Growth: The Role of Natural Resources as a Channel through Conflict," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(3), pages 378-391, June.
    7. Matthew R DiGiuseppe & Colin M Barry & Richard W Frank, 2012. "Good for the money," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 49(3), pages 391-405, May.
    8. Domingues Patrick, 2011. "A Database on the Mozambican Civil War," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-32, May.
    9. Mehdi Abid & Habib Sekrafi & Ramzi Farhani & Zouheyr Gheraia & Hanane Abdelli, 2024. "Do Institutional Quality and Terrorism Affect the Natural Resources Rents?," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 14(1), pages 76-85, January.
    10. Issifou, Ismael, 2017. "Can migration reduce civil conflicts as an antidote to rent-seeking?," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 333-353.
    11. Cappelli, Federica & Carnazza, Giovanni & Vellucci, Pierluigi, 2023. "Crude oil, international trade and political stability: Do network relations matter?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    12. Vittorio Daniele, 2011. "Natural Resources and the 'Quality' of Economic Development," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(4), pages 545-573.
    13. Eregha, P.B. & Mesagan, Ekundayo Peter, 2016. "Oil resource abundance, institutions and growth: Evidence from oil producing African countries," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 603-619.
    14. Bodea, Cristina & Higashijima, Masaaki & Singh, Raju Jan, 2016. "Oil and Civil Conflict: Can Public Spending Have a Mitigation Effect?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 1-12.
    15. De Luca, Giacomo & Sekeris, Petros G. & Vargas, Juan F., 2018. "Beyond divide and rule: Weak dictators, natural resources and civil conflict," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 205-221.
    16. Shahida Wizarat, 2013. "Natural Resources, Conflict and Growth Nexus," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 3(8), pages 1063-1082, August.
    17. Fabrizio Carmignani & Abdur Chowdhury, 2007. "The Role of Primary Commodities in Economic Development: Sub-Saharan Africa Versus the Rest of the World," ECE Discussion Papers Series 2007_7, UNECE.
    18. Rigterink, Anouk S., 2010. "The wrong suspect. An enquiry into the endogeneity of natural resource measures to civil war," MPRA Paper 45263, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Arinze Nwokolo, 2018. "Oil Price Shocks and Civil Conflict: Evidence from Nigeria," HiCN Working Papers 274, Households in Conflict Network.
    20. Musayev, Vusal, 2014. "Commodity Price Shocks, Conflict and Growth: The Role of Institutional Quality and Political Violence," MPRA Paper 59786, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:38:y:2010:i:11:p:1657-1666. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.