APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 38 38 AFRICA PEACE AND CONFLICT JOURNAL holders, such as the communities that could possibly suffer from environmental degradation.24 Implementation of these policies and laws undermined the rights of the people in the oil-producing communities of the Niger Delta in numerous ways, including damage to the environment and subsequent losses of livelihoods due to social dislocation and poverty. Exploration for oil had begun in 1908 at Araromi, in present-day Ondo state, by Nigerian Bitumen Corporation, a German company. World War I interrupted this initial effort (but the search resumed in 1937). In 1914 the British colonial government had enacted Oil Mineral Ordinance no. 17, empowering the state to determine prospecting rights. Under the regulation, licenses or leases would only be granted to companies registered in Britain. Shell D’Arcy (which later became Shell Petroleum Development Company in Nigeria) monopolised rights to prospect for oil in the entire Niger Delta, between 1908 and 1959, when other oil companies emerged with licenses to also prospect for oil.25 The Petroleum Act of 1969 and its correlate, the Petroleum (Drilling and Production) Regulation of 1969, was a fairly comprehensive law with provisions for protecting the environment from damage caused by the activities of petroleum extraction, but the oil companies did not comply with many of its regulations. Gas is still being rampantly flared, causing damage to the environment. No systematic and extensive assessment of its impact have been conducted, but the immediate negative effects on the air, land, and crops have been acknowledged, as has its destruction of wildlife.26 Over the past five decades, the formulation and operation of laws supposedly regulating the oil sector have served to undermine the fundamental environmental, economic, social, and cultural concerns of local populations. It is easily discernable that some laws, such as the Land Use Act of 1978, were calculated efforts by the federal government to effectively remove problems of access to land needed by the oil industry and the state. Embedded in that particular act is the tacit objective of ensuring unencumbered access to land for the purpose of exploring for and producing oil. Under it, ownership rights of all land and its mineral resources came to belong to the federal government. This served to alienate oil-rich communities from their ancestral lands. The law on land ownership obviously runs contrary to the interest of the indigenous communities in oil-producing areas that depend on environmental resources and the land for their livelihoods. The Ogoni people articulated this interest in a Bill of Rights, accusing the government and oil companies of stealing their wealth in different fora and despoiling the environment. The Ogonis have demanded land restora- 24. These policies include the Oil Mineral Ordinance, 1914 (amended 1925); Oil (Safety) Regulations, 1963; Oil in Navigable Waters Regulations, 1968; Oil in Navigable Waters Act no. 34, 1968; Petroleum Regulations, 1967; Petroleum Act, 1969; Petroleum (Drilling and Production) Regulations, 1969; Petroleum (Drilling and Production Amendment) Regulations, 1973; Petroleum Refining Regulation, 1974; and the Land Use Act, 1978. 25. Fidelis Allen, ‘Background: Petroleum and Nigeria’, report on communities and a civil society consultation forum on the petroleum industry bill, organized by the Social Integrated Development Centre (Social Action), Stakeholder Democracy Network, and Bayelsa Forum of NGOs, Yenegoa, 27–28 November 2009, 1–3. 26. The flaring of gas has been denounced by successive governments in Nigeria but remains legal in so far as there is no law prohibiting it. The government has regularly moved deadlines to implement a ban on it.