Citizenship and resource control in Nigeria: the case of minority coummunities in the Niger Delta

The struggle for resource control by communities in the oil-producing areas in the Niger Delta assumed a central position in the discourse on the national question, ethnic minority politics and environmental degradation in Nigeria from the early 1990s. This is largely due to the activities of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) that greatly helped to popularise and internationalise the issue. Available scholarly work has concentrated on ethnic minority politics, the restructuring of Nigeria's federalism and environmental degradation. However, little effort has been made to interrogate the significance and implications of the resource control issue for the citizenship rights of Nigerians, in particular, the people of the oil-producing communities. The marginalisation of the citizenship rights of the minority oil-producing communities helped to fuel the resort to ethnic citizenship rights agitation as the basis for resource control. This paper states that the operation of a true federalism in Nigeria has to be accompanied by meaningful devolution of power at the local level, to ensure that the common people have better control over the wealth derived from their natural resources.