THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF RESOURCE CURSE AND THE NIGER DELTA CRISIS IN NIGERIA: MATTERS ARISING

Political economy literature is awash with analyses that attempt to identify the core reasons behind the development and or underdevelopment of different states and zones of the world. Two major questions that such studies attempt to answer are, "how does a state's natural resource wealth influence its economic development?" and "How does natural resource endowment contribute to political conflict in countries that are so endowed?" For some decades now, the exploitation of natural resources has been a determining factor in the stability or otherwise of natural resource rich states. Studies have shown that the exploitation of natural resources like crude oil, columbite and diamond have contributed to a number of civil wars and internal crises in Africa. In Nigeria, it has been a case of armed struggle in the Niger Delta creeks; between militants and federal forces posted to secure the area. The result is that instead of yielding foreign exchange and prosperity to the citizens of the countries so endowed, the presence of such resource, constitute a major source of political conflict within nations, resulting in such countries being referred to as the poorest of the poor in the world. Some studies indicate the fact that these problems evolve from politics surrounding ownership, management, and control of natural resources in Africa. It is in the face of this reality that we attempt to situate Nigeria's Niger Delta crisis in this resource curse matrix and propose the hypothesis that, there is a relationship between the resource curse theory and the Niger Delta crisis in Nigeria. Our findings agree with the core assumption of this paradigm that instead of ushering in development, poor management of resources, greed and bad governance in the third world contribute greatly to her underdevelopment, strife and poverty, in the midst of abundant natural resources.