### Towards an explanation of insurgency: orchestration of the parallel oil economy

Much of the focus of research and ‘commentary’ on the Niger Delta takes as given the pre-eminence of the oil company/state versus militant conflict scenario, which pits MEND against the rest. Indeed the historical presentation in the preceding section does not entirely break with this trend, which tends to highlight the ways in which armed violence has escalated in recent years (since 1999) and, in line with Collier, focuses on how ‘greed’ and ‘resource capture’ spur rebellion. Much of this work also invariably cites data on ‘oil-related deaths’ in the Delta as evidence of the conflict escalation. The federally sponsored Technical committee report speaks of 1000 people having been killed in the first nine months of 2008, caught in the crossfire between the military and armed groups.13 The Ijaw People's Association of the UK and Ireland, Ogele Club, claims that between 1999 and 2006 up to 5000 Ijaw people have been killed as part of a systematic attempt to ‘wipe out a people because of the rich natural resources in the area’.14 Amnesty International cites 680 deaths in 2003 and 1000 deaths in 2004. The Small arms survey of 2008 singles out oil-related conflicts as the third most common cause of violent death, behind crime and electoral violence between December 2006 and November 2007 (Hazen and Horner 2008, p. 53). NigeriaWatch highlights the problem of comparing data across time given the mix of different criteria used by different data collection institutions,15 but in 2008 still maintained that because the Niger Delta ‘records a thousand people killed every year … [it] should fall into the category of ‘high intensity conflict’, alongside such better-known hot spots as Chechnya and Colombia'. In Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers, NigeriaWatch gives a death toll of 1158 in 2006, 1451 in 2007 and 915 from January to November 2008; ‘this includes accidents and all types of violence’ (NigeriaWatch 2008, p. 8).

Yet the above profusion of often-contradictory statistics, which are also difficult to verify (Cramer 2006, p. 1), suggests that the picture is far from clear. What they do tell us is that violence in the Delta has multiple causes. Military-style security solutions premised on addressing just one of them (as advocated by Collier et al.) therefore pose problems. Rather than see the Niger Delta conflict as ‘insurgency’ alone, we propose, in line with Keen's study of conflict in Sierra Leone (Keen 2005), an approach which sees insurgency as one amongst a plethora of conflict scenarios and a rehearsed rather than real one at that, but whose victims are nevertheless real enough. Anecdotal evidence of the mobile telephone numbers of JTF commanders being held by key militants and used to forewarn of imminent attack suggests high degrees of complicity or collusion between would-be belligerents.16 The orchestration of conflict scenarios by all three parties has also served as a cover to facilitate access to the oil-theft trade. Indeed, as identified as early as 2003, confrontations often stem from disagreements over access to illegal oil bunkering routes (Zalik 2004a).

The fact that insurgency in the Niger Delta is as much orchestrated as real suggests that we pay closer attention to identifying whose interests might be best served from orchestration on this scale. We argue that the orchestration of violence and insecurity in the Niger Delta has and continues to serve the interests of all those involved in the illicit extraction and sale of oil, which has been an important feature of Nigeria's oil economy since its inception. Far from being a departure from a ‘pre-war’ situation, the emergence of armed militancy is the result of past practices that have backfired; a classic case of chickens coming home to roost (WAC Global Services 2003). In a context of scarcity and high youth unemployment, securing access to ‘security contract’ markets had, by the turn of the century, become critical to the daily survival of growing numbers of young men and women (and the broader communities of which they were part) in the Niger Delta. The increasing willingness of oil companies (and state governments) to ‘deploy’ security responsibility to the Nigerian security forces to guarantee their own security (see Abrahams and Williams 2011, p. 139), particularly from 2004 onwards, clearly upset the apple cart for many youth less able to exert the same pressure on potential oil-company clients, and less able to enjoy unrestricted access to illegal oil-bunkering routes.

At the same time, the insurgency ‘situation’ sharpened and institutionalised these long established heterodox forms of ‘security provision’. Between 2003 and 2009 oil companies became increasingly obliged to pay substantial sums in ‘protection fees’ to different armed groups and the JTF, both also backed by state government sponsorship (Newsom 2011). So even with the JTF present, these strategies failed to sufficiently insulate oil companies from external pressure. One of the initially controversial federal proposals put forward after the amnesty was to oblige oil companies to professionalise security provision locally, by enabling communities to establish security providers, with well-defined responsibilities and transparent contracting arrangements (with uniforms to boot). One private security company working for Shell actually explored with militants the possibility of such an approach. The idea was however shelved in favour of the continuation of informal (secretive) ‘protection money’ style payments to a chosen few militant leaders, much to the dismay of the general population who ultimately bear the cost of these conflict-inducing approaches to security provision.17

Oil companies have not been alone in sustaining the protection/extortion culture that perpetuates insecurity in the Delta. Whilst politicians have sponsored and armed militant groups for electoral and rent-seeking purposes, once in office they have increasingly found themselves obliged to pay protection money to said militants to insulate themselves from extremely well-armed groups. A basic ‘tail-wagging-the-dog’ scenario emerged throughout the Delta at the height of the insurgency in which state governors on the one hand were paying militants not to attack oil installations, and at the same time were paying members of the JTF to refrain from attacking militants. The-then governor of Bayelsa state, Timipre Sylva, had in 2008 spearheaded a Bayelsa-wide ‘cash for peace’ initiative', which involved paying off militants rather than endorsing military strikes against them, as in Delta and Rivers States. The federal amnesty programme essentially replicated the Bayelsa initiative (of the Bayelsa State Conflict Resolution Centre) which ensured that JTF operatives did not engage armed groups in combat, and in turn that the latter did not carry out operations that could attract military reprisals. In turn, militia leaders received cash payments monthly from the state government and also agreed not to carry out operations against state targets (although this did not always work according to plan). Each camp commander is said to have received monthly allowances of up to US$67,000 in so-called protection money as far back as 2005, when Goodluck Jonathan was governor of the state (Africa Confidential 2009).

The 2009 amnesty, in paying off militants, intended to take them out the ‘security provision’ equation. Yet by removing them or at least ring-fencing their leadership – quite literally, as evidenced by the state provision of security to one of the formerly most powerful militant leaders, Government Ekpemupolo (Tompolo), who currently relies on a mobile police force escort for 24-hour protection – it tipped the balance in favour of the official enforcers of peace and security, the JTF, and a select number of favoured former-militant commanders, who no longer have to compete with each other over security contracts and oil bunkering.18 By sanctioning the integration of a restricted number of ex-militant leaders as privileged security providers (real or imagined) into the apparatus of the state, it weeded out the others. Some journalists have likened this to the mafia strategy of ‘organising’ criminal activities.19