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.At critical junctures, different policydecisions and political choices might have been made about Nigeria soil assets, so as to break the vicious cycle of oil dependence andeconomic and political decline.Moreover, transition to democracy,whatever its flaws, could still create spaces for better governance of thepetroleum sector and to tackle the growth of violence.To focus solelyon the malign legacies of oil-funded authoritarianism and corruptionwould be to write off Nigeria s new democracy from the start, and tocondemn the country to a future of escalating conflict.Similarly we seethe vibrant tradition of grassroots protest in the Niger Delta and else-where as a potential foundation for democratic politics.Protest move-ments posed an alternative vision of the state in the dying years of themilitary era.Although that vision has been badly compromised by thesocial divisions, rent seeking and conflicts now tearing Niger Deltacommunities apart, it has not been entirely extinguished, and could stillpose a credible alternative to violence.MILITARY RULE AND NIGERIA S PETRO-STATE, 1966 99Nigeria s experience of violence has intertwined with its history ofauthoritarian, and more specifically military, governance.The coun-try was under military rule for 30 years, most of its post-independ-ence history.The militarised state was authoritarian and rapacious,but at the same time increasingly fragile, corrupt and unable todeliver development.The historical turning point in the formation of a petro-state was thecivil war.War broke out in 1967 because of the political and economic[ 44 ]NIGERIAcontradictions of the post-colonial state, including the legacy of unevendevelopment under colonial rule, vicious oligopolistic competitionamongst members of Nigeria s political class for power and patronagein a three (later four) region federation, and two military coups whoseimpact reverberated outside the armed forces themselves and cameclose to breaking up the federation.7 There remains some dispute abouthow far the start of oil exports caused the civil war.What is beyonddoubt is that it had a decisive impact on its course and outcome, includ-ing the creation of the de facto alliance between the government ofNigeria, foreign powers (notably Britain) and international oil compa-nies (especially Shell-BP) which defeated Biafra s secession.After the war, the politics of rent extraction both consolidated andsubverted the emergent petro-state through struggles to appropriate oilrevenues.The federal military government appropriated the bulk ofthese revenues to expand state investment, to build a large federalbureaucracy, to sustain a well-armed coercive apparatus and toconstruct an extensive patronage system, redistributing jobs and rentsat every level of the political system and entrenching systemic corrup-tion.Rival �lites contested control of the state and its oil revenues,making the politics of revenue allocation (between the government, thestates and local governments) a central focus of Nigerian federalism.Aslong as oil production, prices and revenues increased, factional strug-gles were mostly contained within the military and political �lite although even then they could be deadly, spawning several coups andcoup attempts.But as Nigeria drifted deeper into debt and fiscal crisisfrom the 1980s, the struggles over oil revenues became more intense.Economic and fiscal recession turned into political recession, generat-ing deep crises of political authority.There occurred a hollowing-out ofthe state, including diminished capacity to deliver security and otherpublic goods.This extended to the military establishment itself andeven more to the underfunded, inefficient and corrupt national policeforce, whose inability to ensure public order and cope with rising crim-inality became a major security problem in its own right.We distinguish a number of phases in the petro-state s creation andsubsequent crisis, as outlined below.These are linked both to politicaltransitions and to the transformations in the petroleum economy shownin the graph of Figure1.1 (which relates to the period discussed here, andis of interest, since it was made by the Presidential Advisor on Petroleumand Energy (Daukoru 2004).They may be summarised as:" The initially disastrous phase of military governance from 1966 to1970, when both the federation and military establishment cameclose to falling apart but were eventually restructured to fight thecivil war, fortified by their alliance with the oil multinationals.8" The 1970 79 post-war period of soaring oil production and revenues,[ 45 ]35003000Decade ofrepression / dawn2500of violence2000Decade of1500confrontationDecade ofand resourceinnocence1000 controlGoldenPresentdecadeIn the500beginningFigure 1.1 Nigerian crude oil production performance 1958 2003Source: Daukoru 2004[4 6] 000 BOPD19551960196519701975198019851990199520002005NIGERIAand the establishment of the essential structures of the petro-stateunder the military governments of Generals Gowon, Mohammedand Obasanjo, culminating in the first return to civilian rule in 1979." Oil-linked economic and political recession during the 1980s,marked by stagnant oil production and revenues, fiscal crisis andthe growth of external indebtedness, a coup overthrowing Presi-dent Shagari s government in 1983 and the emergence of newgenerations of political soldiers with the power to  chop Nigeria sresources under the Buhari and Babangida military regimes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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