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Political Violence and Oil in Africa pp 85–128Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Historical Narratives of the Ogoni and the Ijaw

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on how the narratives of the Ogoni led to nonviolence and those of the Ijaw to violence. This first empirical chapter seeks to elucidate the reasons why although the Ogoni and the Ijaw reside within a related topography, sharing similar origins, values and culture, the narratives from the two groups do not present them as having a collective voice or as collectively representing the Niger Delta. The narratives will be analysed to show that the discourses used to denote the grievances of the two movements are distinct, with the Ogoni using a moderate nonviolent form of discourse and the Ijaw indicating a stronger and more contentious debate while charting a distinct cause. This distinction will clarify that the narratives each work for particular communities that have significant context specificity of their own.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An elite club in Ogoniland, which will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 6.

  2. 2.

    Oil Mining Lease (OML) 11.

  3. 3.

    Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

  4. 4.

    Led by Sir Henry Willink, a respected Queen’s Counsel, the panel was commissioned in September 1957.

  5. 5.

    Spokesman of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

  6. 6.

    The Kaiama Declaration represents an articulated set of demands from the Ijaw youths to the state that is similar to the Ogoni Bill of Rights. It will be analysed fully in Chap. 5, to demonstrate the closest the Ijaw movement ever came to nonviolence—which was short lived.

  7. 7.

    A revolutionary leader of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and Professor of Economics, also known as Asuquo Ita, Toyo was a Nigerian Marxist scholar, human rights activist and academic at the University of Calabar, Nigeria.

  8. 8.

    The legendary Nigerian Afro-beat musician and pan-Africanist.

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  1. Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, Coventry, UK

    Zainab Ladan Mai-Bornu

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Mai-Bornu, Z.L. (2020). Historical Narratives of the Ogoni and the Ijaw. In: Political Violence and Oil in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45525-5_4

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