Criminal Resistance?

The Politics of Kidnapping Oil Workers

Temitope B. Oriola

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409449911
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317157830
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Crude oil extraction in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria generates 96% of all foreign earnings and 85% of state revenues, making it crucial to the survival of the Nigerian state. Several generations of state neglect, corruption and mismanagement have ensured that the Delta region is one of the most socio-economically and politically deprived in the country. By the late 1990s there was a frightening proliferation of armed gangs and insurgent groups. Illegal oil bunkering, pipeline vandalism, disruption of oil production activities, riots, and demonstrations intensified and in 2003, insurgents began kidnapping oil workers at a frenetic pace. In late 2005, an uber-insurgent movement 'organization' was formed in Nigeria. Christened the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), it operates as an amorphous, multifaceted amalgam of insurgent groups with an unprecedented clinical precision in execution of intents. By focussing on kidnappings that are putatively connected to the struggle for emancipating the Niger Delta, Oriola makes the case for analysing MEND as a social movement organization, rather than a terrorist or criminal gang by showing how political processes shape kidnappings in the Delta. The use of violent repertoires of contention has not garnered sufficient attention in the social movement literature, despite the fact that that around the world, many similar groups are adopting violent tactics without necessarily eschewing non-violent techniques. Based on multi-actor research, including interviews and focus group discussions with community members, military authorities, 42 ex-insurgents directly involved in illegal oil bunkering and kidnapping, and official email statements from 'Jomo Gbomo', the spokesperson of MEND, this book will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists and peace and security studies scholars.

Chapter 1
“Dénouement” as Introduction

I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial … The company has indeed ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come … for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the company has waged in the Delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished … On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and those who assist them. I predict that the scene here will be played and replayed by generations yet unborn. I predict that the dénouement of the riddle of the Niger Delta will soon come. The agenda is being set at this trial. Whether the peaceful ways I have favoured will prevail depends on what the oppressor decides: what signals it sends to the waiting public. (emphasis added)

Kenule Saro-Wiwa, leader, Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) October 31, 1995.

We must avoid falling into the throes of what Adaka Boro foresaw forty years ago. Let them call us terrorists, let them call us bandits but it is important and critical that we remain resolute in the pursuit of the ideals of our fallen heroes like Isaac Adaka Boro, Ken Saro Wiwa and a host of others.

Asari Dokubo, Leader, Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF) November 2009.

On January 11, 2006, four foreign oil workers were kidnapped in an attack on a Shell Petroleum Development Corporation (SPDC, hereafter, Shell) offshore oil facility in Rivers state by a nascent insurgent group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, (MEND). The attack also led to a daily loss of 120,000 barrels of crude oil (Technical Committee on the Niger Delta 2008). Another attack on Shell facilities in Port Harcourt four days later led to the death of 17 soldiers (Technical Committee on the Niger Delta 2008). By the following month or what became known as “dark February”, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) kidnapped nine expatriate workers of Shell. While insurgents and oil corporations are generally silent about the ransom paid to secure the release of the oil workers, the popular name—“ATM”—given to white oil workers from the geo-political West is an insignia of the times: The release of each of the expatriates costs an average of $250,000.1 The oil industry in Nigeria collectively spent at least $3 billion on security annually at the height of insurgent activities between 2007 and 2009.2 A donation of $200 million by the Nigerian oil industry to the federal government in February 2011 is only a fraction of the budget of oil corporations for ensuring the safety of their personnel and facilities. These incidents would seem to constitute a new Nigerian business model to a cursory observer monitoring the rise of kidnapping in Nigeria through decontextualized media reports.

However, eleven years before these kidnapping incidents in the Niger Delta, on 31 October 1995, Kenule Saro-Wiwa, the leader of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), a non-violent social movement organization, was engaged in a battle for his life before a military tribunal set up by the regime of General Sani Abacha. Justice Ibrahim Auta, chair of the tribunal concluded the monumental task before him. On trial were 15 environmental and human rights activists—Ogonis from the stupendously oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Justice Auta was persuaded that members of MOSOP led by Saro-Wiwa and the National Youth Council of Ogoni People (NYCOP) successfully orchestrated a riot at Giokoo on May 21, 1994. The riot led to the murder of four prominent sons of Ogoni believed to be sympathetic towards the Nigerian state in the festering oil struggle in the Delta—an unpardonable treason in the eyes of the Delta public. The sentence was death by hanging for nine of the activists including Saro-Wiwa. Ever perspicacious and painstakingly au courant of history, Saro-Wiwa declared in his final comments at the tribunal that the “dénouement of the riddle of the Niger Delta will soon come. Whether the peaceful ways I have favoured will prevail depends on what the oppressor decides: what signals it sends to the waiting public” (Mbeke-Ekanem 2000:162). Saro-Wiwa argued that the treatment meted out to him and his colleagues would shape the trajectory of the festering Niger Delta crisis.

Nigeria’s taciturn maximum ruler, General Sani Abacha, met with the governing body, the Provisional Ruling Council (PRC), to ratify the sentence passed on the Ogoni Nine eight days after the death sentence was delivered. Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists were executed on November 10, 1995 before they could appeal the death sentence.

Saro-Wiwa brought the conditions of the people of the Delta to international prominence through the instrumentality of MOSOP and suave use of non-violent tactics in a well-manicured international campaign. A poet, writer, publisher, activist, and entrepreneur, Saro-Wiwa galvanized the disparate elements of the Ogonis—a heterogeneous collection of peoples—into a political force. The hanging of Saro-Wiwa and his kinsmen remains a watershed in the struggle over resource control in the Delta region of Nigeria (Watts 2007; Bob 2005, 2002). Saro-Wiwa also became a symbolic avatar emblematic of the failure of non-violent protest (Bob 2005).

A lot happened that fundamentally challenged the human, material and ideational infrastructure of the Nigerian state in the 14 years separating the statements that head this chapter from Saro-Wiwa and Asari Dokubo. For all intents and purposes, the Niger Delta effectively became an ungovernable space in the latter part of the 1990s (Watts 2009a, 2008c) as the burgeoning crisis increasingly developed into a mature insurgency (Watts 2009b) from the early 2000s. Pipeline vandalism, illegal oil bunkering, oil facility occupation, and car bombs have become rampant. A frightening proliferation of small arms was also occurring. More importantly, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), an amorphous, multifaceted amalgam of insurgent groups which demonstrated a devastating clinical precision in executing its intents emerged late in 2005. By early 2006 kidnapping of foreign oil workers assumed a frightening scale. The explicit aim of MEND is to cripple the capacity of the Nigerian rentier petro-state to produce crude oil—its lifeblood.

In an e-mail statement on March 15, 2010, MEND’s spokesperson Jomo Gbomo announced a breach of security at the annex of the Delta state government house in Warri, venue of a post-amnesty dialogue organized by the Vanguard newspaper. MEND advised the public to avoid the venue and vicinity. MEND detonated two car bombs at the time identified in the e-mail. MEND warned that the “deceit of endless dialogue and conferences will no longer be tolerated” and they hoped they had convinced the Delta state governor Emmanuel Uduaghan that MEND was not a “media creation” as he had asserted. In the end, eight persons were injured and six persons died in the bomb blasts. MEND decided not to detonate the third car bomb ostensibly on humanitarian grounds. Seven months later, as Nigeria marked its 50th independence anniversary from British colonialism, MEND carried out bomb attacks that claimed at least 12 lives. Not known to waste words, even in death, Saro-Wiwa’s prognostication was astute: The dénouement had indeed begun.

The Study

Experts working on the causal link between oil (and/or oil dependence) and conflict have found Nigeria’s Delta empirically tantalizing (Oyefusi 2008, 2007; Tabb 2007; Collier and Hoeffler 2005; Ross 2003; Collier and Hoeffler 2002; Collier 2000; Collier and Hoeffler 1998; Welch 1995). Since the discovery of crude oil in Oloibiri in the Niger Delta region (situated in Ogbia local government area of the present Bayelsa state) of Nigeria in 1956, many Nigerians have come to wish that this discovery never happened. Oil has fuelled worsening social relations in Nigeria rather than fostering development. The host communities in the Niger Delta (hereafter, the Delta) in particular have seen little beyond violence, state repression, squalor, unemployment and pervasive neglect (Oyefusi 2008; Omeje 2007; Ibeanu and Luckham 2007; Okereke 2006; Okonta 2005; Human Rights Watch 2005; Zalik 2004).

The Delta is rife with a range of rebellious and (quasi)-criminal activities like hot-tapping, illegal oil bunkering, pipeline vandalism, disruption of oil production activities, flow station shut downs, riots, demonstrations, bombings and so on. This book focuses specifically and primarily on kidnapping, recognizing that this phenomenon exists in a wider context. While other forms of violence are visible in the Delta, kidnapping appears to be the newest and one of the most dangerous developments. In addition, groups like MEND that are engaged in kidnapping oil workers claim they do so in protest against the Nigerian state and oil corporations that exploit their communities’ natural resource without providing adequate compensation. Hence, MEND and its ilk claim they are kidnapping oil workers in the interest of the people of the Delta. MEND claims to be part of the larger social movement that since the 1960s in the Delta aims to gain resource control for the Delta people.

Kidnapping is a sociologically heterogeneous phenomenon (Caramazza and Leone 1984). Concannon’s (2008: 4) delineation of six types of kidnapping provides a foundation for comprehending this complex phenomenon. These are domestic kidnapping (intra-family), political kidnapping (to further a political agenda), predatory kidnapping of an adult, predatory kidnapping of minor, profit kidnapping, revenge kidnapping and staged kidnapping (feigned to cover up another crime). However, kidnappings in Nigeria do not fit into these conceptual schemata. For instance, in Nigeria domestic kidnapping mostly functions as profit kidnapping and vice versa rather than as an unfortunate methodology for settling family squabbles.

Akpan’s (2010) categorization of kidnappings offers a more nuanced explanation of the phenomenon within the Nigerian context. Akpan classifies kidnapping in the Niger Delta into four categories. These are “kidnapping as a general liberation struggle”, “kidnapping for economic reasons”, “kidnapping as a political tool”, and “kidnapping as a new habit of crime” (Akpan 2010: 38–40). This schema inadvertently becomes tautological as the “economic reason” and “new habit of crime” categories are essentially the same. Conversely, the difference between “kidnapping as a general liberation struggle” and “kidnapping as political tool” is difficult to discern.

It is important to note that kidnapping neither exclusively targets oil workers nor geographically bound to the Niger Delta. Kidnapping is common in other parts of Nigeria, especially Anambra in the South East and Lagos in the South West. The targets in these states are business elites, the professional class and other individuals with significant economic capital. This presents a conundrum because while MEND actively engages in kidnapping, it refutes suggestions that it collects ransom for releasing the victims (see Okonta 2006) and vehemently opposes kidnapping for profit (Okaba 2009). Therefore, the type of kidnapping this book focuses on must be differentiated from other types of kidnappings in the Delta and other parts of Nigeria.

There are two major types of kidnappings that have little or no relationship to the Niger Delta insurgency. These are opportunistic kidnappings and political vendetta/revenge kidnappings. While all types of kidnappings have a certain element of opportunism, opportunistic kidnapping is in a class of its own. It constitutes a “commerce in human life” rather than an explicitly political act (Jenkins 1985: xx) or “a new habit of crime” (Akpan 2010: 40). The victims often have nothing to do with the conditions of the people of the Niger Delta. Opportunistic kidnappings are sheer business ventures by unemployed young people, who profess no ideological conviction and have no rationale other than economic benefits for their actions.

There are at least three variants of opportunistic kidnappings in Nigeria. First, there are family-inspired kidnappings, targeted kidnapping of wealthy persons or their family and random kidnapping. In the first case, a fairly wealthy individual may be set up for kidnapping by a member of their family. The family member provides actionable intelligence about the itinerary of the potential victim, their habits, net worth and recent earnings. In the second case, wealthy persons or their family members are targeted exclusively by kidnappers. For instance, in 2009, the father of a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Professor Charles Soludo, as well as a wealthy businessman Chief Godwin Okeke and Nollywood actor Pete Edochie were kidnapped in separate incidents. They were all released after ransoms were paid by their families, friends and associates. While these cases were well-orchestrated, in the third case, a less-scientific methodology is used. Individuals are kidnapped because of a misfortune of spatial location. Such victims are held until their family members pay for their release.

Political vendetta or revenge kidnappings constitute the second class of kidnappings that must be distinguished from the focus of this book. Political vendetta kidnappings can take the form of intra-elite political rancor. A politician may hire a gang to kidnap an opponent or a member of the opponent’s family to create a distraction until an election is decided. In some cases, the homes of political opponents could also be bombed. This could also be a form of punishment for reneging on an agreement. Alternatively, intra or inter-communal feuds may lead to kidnapping members from opposing sides. Whether opportunistic or for political purposes, these kidnappings conform to what Hamilton (1980) calls a deadly political game.

The focus of this book is on kidnappings that are putatively connected to the struggle for emancipating the Niger Delta. This set of kidnappings has fundamental characteristics that distinguish it from the waves of kidnappings mentioned earlier. First, these kidnappings are constructed by the insurgents as part of the wider social movement for justice in the Delta. Therefore, apart from monetary demands, insurgents clamor for resource control and provision of basic social goods like roads, schools, hospitals, electricity, etc. from the Nigerian state and oil corporations. Second, oil workers, particularly non-Nigerians or expatriate oil workers are the targets. This precludes kidnapping of Nigerian politicians, business elites and their family members. Third, in the course of these kidnappings, insurgents come into confrontations with the Joint Task Force (JTF), the Nigerian military unit responsible for maintaining security in the Delta, rather than the Nigerian Police. The JTF is concerned with securing oil facilities, ensuring the safety of oil workers by preventing kidnapping and providing an environment that guarantees the continuous extraction of crude oil in the Delta. Other types of kidnappings and the maintenance of security in other parts of Nigeria are the duties of the police. Fourth, this set of kidnappings involves actors operating in the Delta’s creeks with wide connections in the insurgency rather than pockets of individuals acting in isolation across Nigeria. Insurgents kidnapping oil workers are thus members of recognizable groups in the Delta. Finally, this set of kidnappings takes place at the site of oil infrastructure—oil fields, offshore and onshore rigs—and other spaces and symbols of oil extraction in the Niger Delta.

Having divided kidnappings in Nigeria into three broad categories, it is important to point out that there are no reliable figures on the frequency and geographical distribution of all but one of these forms. There is no credible data on incidents of opportunistic and political vendetta/revenge kidnappings in Nigeria. The third category of kidnappings discussed above—kidnappings that are apparently connected to the Delta struggle—are more rigorously recorded by several organizations. One of these is Bergen Risk Solutions. Its June 2010 report indicates that in 2006, 70 oil workers were kidnapped. In 2007, 165 oil workers were kidnapped, while in 2008 and 2009, 165 and 48 oil workers were kidnapped respectively. Between January and June 2010, 31 persons were kidnapped (Bergen Risk Solutions 2010).

MEND is widely believed to be responsible for most of these kidnapping incidents, as stated earlier. However, the level of public support for MEND’s kidnapping tactic in the Delta is ambiguous. This book investigates kidnapping in the Delta with a view to ascertaining whether the Delta people view the act as a form of protest or simply the nefarious activity of a few criminals and indeed whether such distinctions make sense in this context. It is also concerned with how MEND frames its activities to garner public support.

This book is concerned with an ostensibly legally irremediable antinomy: On one hand, the Nigerian rentier petro-state has failed to fulfill its obligation to provide basic social goods to its people yet wishes to maintain order. On the other hand, some young men and women in the oil-producing communities have formed militias specializing in kidnapping oil workers purportedly as a form of protest against the ineptitude and negligence of the state and marginalization by transnational oil corporations. The spectacular effervescence of unprecedented violence in the Delta remains the most virile threat to the Nigerian state since the civil war of 1967–1970. For instance, the three core Niger Delta states comprising Bayelsa, Rivers, and Delta have a combined total of at least 120–150 on-going violent conflicts (Watts 2008c; UNDP 2007). The Delta has attracted worldwide attention because of the incessant kidnapping of oil workers by militant youth,3 pipeline vandalism and destruction of offshore and onshore rigs. These incidents have contributed to rising prices of crude oil in the world market.

How do we understand the kidnapping of oil workers in the Niger Delta region? With the stated question as the overarching objective, the following questions are also investigated: How does the political process, particularly the politics of oil and resource distribution and control, in Nigeria, shape kidnappings? What are the opinions of select members of Agge and Okerenkoko communities (as a microcosm of the Delta people) about the kidnapping of oil workers? Following the opinions of community membe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 “Dénouement” as Introduction
• 2 Kidnapping as “Public Good”: The Actors, Social Benefits and Harms of Nigeria’s Oil Insurgency
• 3 Criminal Resistance? Interrogating Political Kidnapping
• 4 Car Bombing “with due respect”: The Idea called MEND
• 5 Framing the MEND Insurgency
• 6 Master Frames in the MEND Insurgency
• 7 A Repertoire of Protest or Criminal Expropriation?
• 8 Summary and Conclusions
• References
• Index