APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 41 Oil, Politics, and Conflict in the Niger Delta 41 poverty, underdevelopment and conflicts since its commercial exploitation began in the late 1950s’.33 Poverty, unemployment, and underemployment are a function of how Nigerian politics and the economy are managed. A nonkilling approach would require the practice or use of models that deal effectively with the need to reduce poverty by creating jobs. Such models should de-emphasize the re-distribution of wealth or resources in society while increasing productivity of goods and services. The lure of oil money seems to have blinded the members of the political class to the need and their responsibility to deliver social services to the people they are supposed to represent. A boom in corruption and desire to pocket oil money by the political class—with its own debilitating intra-class struggle for political power—underpins the inability of the Nigerian state to address critical social needs of citizens in the Niger Delta. In August 2008, Social Action and the Centre for Global Nonviolence held a conference at Aluu, Rivers State, on whether a nonkilling society is possible in the delta. Seminar participants were drawn from youth groups, civil society, nongovernmental organizations, and traditional ruling institutions in the Niger Delta. Citing pervasive poverty, 30 out of 50 participants (60 percent) insisted that a nonkilling Niger Delta is impossible. They offered the following reasons: destruction of the environment, lack of development in the region, pervasive unemployment, and lack of political power. According to many of the participants, the attainment of such a society would be highly dependent not only on a drastic reduction of poverty but also on the political empowerment of the region in the context of governance at the federal level. The 20 participants (40 percent) who argued that a nonkilling society in the Niger Delta is possible linked it to specific preconditions, including regional development and political and economic empowerment of the people of the delta.34 A NONKILLING TRANSITION? Until 1 October 2010, when bomb explosions killed about a dozen people near Eagle Square in Abuja, the year could have been characterized by the lull in violent activities by armed groups and soldiers in the Niger Delta. In particular, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which was responsible for a number of attacks on oil facilities and the kidnapping of expatriate and Nigerian oil company workers since 2006, had been quiet, until the October attack, for which it claimed responsibility. Also, illegal oil deals and vandalism of pipelines had fallen drastically, as had confrontations between the Joint Military Task Force and militia groups in the delta. The relative calm in terms of the suspension of oil-related violence was credited to the assumption of the presidency by Goodluck Jonathan, a native of the Niger Delta. 33. O. O. Olarinmoye, ‘Politics does matter: The Nigerian state and conflict (resource) curse’, Africa Development, 33:3 (2008), 21–34. 34. Fidelis Allen was a speaker at the seminar, held 7–8 August 2008. Among those who attended were militants who later accepted the amnesty offered by the federal government under President Musa Yar’Adua and now being carried out by President Goodluck Jonathan. For a report on the seminar, visit the Social Action Web site at www.saction.org.