“Oil is Our Doom”: Photographs of the Niger Delta and Beyond

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 Average annual OPEC crude oil price from 1960 to 2017 (in U.S. dollars per barrel), https://www.statista.com/statistics/262858/change-in-opec-crude-oil-prices-since-1960/.

2 Full text of president Buhari's 2016 independence anniversary speech, Daily Post, October 1, 2016, http://dailypost.ng/2016/10/01/full-text-president-buharis-2016-independence-anniversary-speech/.

3 Ukoha Ukiwo (2008) described the Niger Delta region as an “empire of commodities.”

4 The official estimate of pipeline explosions and oil spillage incidents in the Niger Delta is put at an average of 300 times every year. See Nnimmo Bassey (2006).

5 See “Commission of Nobel laureates on peace, equity, and development in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria” in Watts (2008a, p. 218).

6 This information is provided in a communique titled “The Kaiama Declaration.” The communique was issued at the end of All Ijaw Youths conference, held in Kaiama on December 11, 1998. Ijaw is one of the major ethnic groups in the Niger Delta. See “The Kaiama Declaration,” http://www.essentialaction.org/shell/kaiama.html.

7 Interview with George Osodi, Lagos, August 26, 2013.

8 “Ken Sao-Wiwa,” http://priceofoil.org/thepriceofoil/human-rights/ken-saro-wiwa/.

9 Michael Watts used the term petro-violence in describing the violence caused by oil exploration in the Niger Delta. See Courson (2007, p. 12).

10 On November 20, 1999, Nigerian soldiers acting by the order of President Olusegun Obasanjo attacked Odi town in Bayelsa State, killing 2483 civilians. This was as a result of the killing of 12 police officers near the town by unknown persons. These kinds of incidents are always connected to the struggle against the oil companies and the Nigerian government. See Bassey (2006).

11 Richard Auty, a British economist, was the first the use the term resource curse in 1993. See “Brief History: The Resource Curse,” Alex Perry, Time, June 28, 2010, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1997460,00.html.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tobenna Okwuosa

Tobenna Okwuosa, PhD ([email protected]), is Lecturer in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, Niger Delta University, Wilberforce Island, Bayelsa, Nigeria. A practicing artist and a critic, Okwuosa has published essays on modern and contemporary Nigerian art practice, the local art market, and other art-related topics. His most recent essays are “Celebrating African Arts at 50 and Its Place in Africa,” African Arts, 2017, and “Peju Layiwola's Art: An Engagement With Benin History and the 1897 Tragedy,” in The Art of Nigerian Women, published by Ben Bosah Books, New Albany, Ohio and Enugu, 2017.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/rcin.