IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/csa/wpaper/2007-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Oil-dependence and Civil conflict in Nigeria

Author

Listed:
  • Aderoju Oyefusi

Abstract

This paper examines oil-dependence and civil conflict in Nigeria focusing on the economic dynamics of resource-induced conflicts. It identifies two dimensions to oil-related civil conflict in the country. The first is the violent rent-seeking political violence that oil-availability generates between the various ethno-regional groups; the second is the Niger Delta crisis. The former is linked to excessive government dependence on oil revenues, an institutionally unstable revenue allocation system, weak political institutional arrangements, lack of effective agencies of restraints to demand transparency and accountability on the part of political office holders, failure to translate oil wealth to sustainable growth and increased standard of living for a larger majority of Nigerians, and a defective property right structure in relation to mineral resource endowment. Violence in the Niger Delta area is attributed, in the main, to weak institutional arrangements manifesting in poorly-conceived laws, lack of enforcement, .regulatory capture., and a marriage of interest between the State and oil companies which often encourage the State to use repressive measures against host communities in cases of disputes. There are also the looting and secession incentives as well as the rentseeking contests that oil-availability and the allure of ownership creates among local participants. Three factors (educational attainment, income level and asset possession) consistently explain the propensity to general violence among individuals in the region in the Ordered and Multinomial regressions on civil disobedience. The paper concludes with a discussion of some measures that may be used to break the conflict trap and overcome the corrupting influence of oil-dependence in Nigeria.

Suggested Citation

  • Aderoju Oyefusi, 2007. "Oil-dependence and Civil conflict in Nigeria," CSAE Working Paper Series 2007-09, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2007-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b88d8d11-f864-495d-b7a8-26cd3a6e884c
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Skaperdas, Stergios & Syropoulos, Constantinos, 1996. "Can the shadow of the future harm cooperation?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 355-372, May.
    2. Fearon, James D. & Laitin, David D., 2003. "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(1), pages 75-90, February.
    3. Skaperdas, Stergios, 1992. "Cooperation, Conflict, and Power in the Absence of Property Rights," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 720-739, September.
    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. Sam, Kabari & Zabbey, Nenibarini & Onyena, Amarachi Paschaline, 2022. "Implementing contaminated land remediation in Nigeria: Insights from the Ogoni remediation project," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    2. Mahdi FAWAZ, 2020. "Ressources naturelles et guerres civiles au Moyen-Orient," Bordeaux Economics Working Papers 2020-09, Bordeaux School of Economics (BSE).
    3. Frank Iyekoretin Ogbeide & Hillary Kanwanye & Sunday Kadiri, 2015. "The Determinants of Unemployment and the Question of Inclusive Growth in Nigeria: Do Resource Dependence, Government Expenditure and Financial Development Matter?," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 11(2), pages 49-64.
    4. Osemeke Louis & Nobert Osemeke, 2017. "The role of ethnic directors in corporate social responsibility: Does culture matter? The cultural trait theory perspectives," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 14(2), pages 152-172, May.
    5. Zubikova, Adela, 2018. "Curse or blessing: economic growth and natural resources (Comparison of the Development of Botswana, Canada, Nigeria and Norway in the Early 21st Century)," Agricultural and Resource Economics: International Scientific E-Journal, Agricultural and Resource Economics: International Scientific E-Journal, vol. 4(1), March.
    6. Aderoju Oyefusi, 2010. "Oil, Youths, and Civil Unrest in Nigeria’s Delta," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 27(4), pages 326-346, September.

    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. Nathan Fiala & Stergios Skaperdas, 2011. "Economic Perspectives on Civil Wars," Chapters, in: Christopher J. Coyne & Rachel L. Mathers (ed.), The Handbook on the Political Economy of War, chapter 10, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Christopher Blattman & Edward Miguel, 2010. "Civil War," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-57, March.
    3. Stergios Skaperdas, 2008. "An economic approach to analyzing civil wars," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 25-44, January.
    4. Raul Caruso, 2010. "Butter, Guns And Ice-Cream Theory And Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 269-283.
    5. Robert MacCulloch & Silvia Pezzini, 2010. "The Roles of Freedom, Growth, and Religion in the Taste for Revolution," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(2), pages 329-358, May.
    6. Thiemo Fetzer & Samuel Marden, 2017. "Take What You Can: Property Rights, Contestability and Conflict," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(601), pages 757-783, May.
    7. Lacomba, Juan A. & Lagos, Francisco & Reuben, Ernesto & van Winden, Frans, 2017. "Decisiveness, peace, and inequality in games of conflict," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 216-229.
    8. Silve, Arthur & Verdier, Thierry, 2018. "A theory of regional conflict complexes," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 434-447.
    9. Crost, Benjamin & Felter, Joseph H. & Johnston, Patrick B., 2016. "Conditional cash transfers, civil conflict and insurgent influence: Experimental evidence from the Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 171-182.
    10. Christopher J. Coyne & Rachel L. Mathers, 2011. "Introduction," Chapters, in: Christopher J. Coyne & Rachel L. Mathers (ed.), The Handbook on the Political Economy of War, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. van der Ploeg, Frederick & Rohner, Dominic, 2012. "War and natural resource exploitation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1714-1729.
    12. Pierre Pecher, 2018. "Ethnic divisions and the effect of appropriative competition intensity on economic performance," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 165-193, May.
    13. Ernesto Dal Bó & Pedro Dal Bó, 2011. "Workers, Warriors, And Criminals: Social Conflict In General Equilibrium," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 646-677, August.
    14. Rafael Reuveny & John W. Maxwell, 2001. "Conflict and Renewable Resources," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 45(6), pages 719-742, December.
    15. Stergios Skaperdas & Constantinos Syropoulos, 2002. "Insecure Property and the Efficiency of Exchange," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(476), pages 133-146, January.
    16. José Garcia Montalvo & Marta Reynal-Querol, 2004. "Ethnic polarization, potential conflict and civil wars," Economics Working Papers 770, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Mar 2005.
    17. Gonzalez, Francisco M., 2007. "Effective property rights, conflict and growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 127-139, November.
    18. Johannes Münster & Klaas Staal, 2011. "War with Outsiders Makes Peace Inside," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 28(2), pages 91-110, April.
    19. Enrico Spolaore & Romain Wacziarg, 2016. "War and Relatedness," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(5), pages 925-939, December.
    20. Serhan Cevik & Mohammad Rahmati, 2015. "Breaking the Curse of Sisyphus: An Empirical Analysis of Post-Conflict Economic Transitions," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 57(4), pages 569-597, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:csa:wpaper:2007-09. 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: Julia Coffey (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    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.