E ISSN: 2583-049X
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International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Research and Studies

Volume 3, Issue 3, 2023

Nigerian Oil and the National Questions of Insecurity and Deep Conflict Divide



Author(s): Dr. CO Okwelum

Abstract:

The Nigerian state appears to have had more cohesion during the colonial times up to the 1914 amalgamation of the southern and northern protectorate. The cohesion between the Nationalists towards the attainment of independence in 1960 is presently looking like a golden age in the history of the country. Though there were scrimmages between the nationalists on the one hand and between the nationalists and the colonialists on the other hand from 1914 till 1960, the period after independence till date appears to be age of ‘tug-of-war’ with at least one civil war in the country’s kitty. Not much is working since independence. Added to corruption and ethnicity, oil appears to have laid a foundation of permanent crises in the country. Since the finding of oil a decade before the civil war, the Nigeria space which was taunted to be one of the brightest art of empire building in the history of modern European colonialism has been in perpetual turmoil. Even as all the divides to be discussed in this study had existed during the colonial and post-colonial eras, they have all been accentuated by oil. The lubricant of oil which could have been used to crease the ship of state has turned the chief instrument of friction and divide. The state and the multinational oil companies have (in their seeming collusion) used the instrument of oil to divide than glue the relationship between the peoples of the country. This study which adopts the doctrinal method highlights the divides which oil has created amongst the Nigerian people and how these divides have become their hurdles in the course of national development and integration. The hurdles are tagged ‘deep’ because there are several of them but the most notable and easily identifiable ones in relation to oil business are captured in this study. This study finds that until the Federal government is disillusioned and allow the nation to develop all the 39 natural minerals resources evenly distributed across the country, conflicts will not subside. The sole concentration on oil as the mainstay of the national economy and its non-transparency in the management of same, has not only bred divides, it has made a great nation which is supposed to move around as a giant to strut around like less than an ant.


Keywords: Nigeria, Oil, National Question, Technology, Divisions

Pages: 285-296

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