The political economy of conflict resolution in a natural resource economy: The case of Nigeria’s Niger Delta

Abstract

This paper embarks on a comprehensive study of the entire peace initiatives adopted to resolve the Niger
Delta conflict in Nigeria with a view to uncover the relationship between the character of the Nigerian State,
the emergence and the continual nature of the crisis. With the aid of fragmented organizational structure
theory, the paper discovered that there is a strong relationship between the character of Nigerian state and
the emergence of the conflict. The paper also discovered that the character of the state has a causal effect on
the pattern of conflict resolution adopted together with the emergence of an ‘economy of conflict’, and that
these were responsible for the persistence of the conflict. It therefore recommends the democratization of
both the production and consumption process in the oil economy and the peace processes as a panacea.