This study examines how the uneven application of regulatory standards in oil
exploration and extraction in Nigeria has exacerbated ethnic and class tensions and how
the oil exploration activities have affected the individual and collective lives of the
people in the Niger Delta region. Overall, the study links the individual and collective
lives of Nigerians, particularly people in Obelle and Obagi communities to the political
economy of global capital. Furthermore, the study explores how the expansion and
activities of global capital necessarily create ethnic tension, class struggle, and gender
inequality. In order to maintain the status quo, global capital creates structural
inequalities that divide societies into hierarchies of the “rich” and the “poor.” The study
also examines the strategies adopted by the people to ameliorate negative consequences
of oil exploration in the communities.
In this study, the researcher posits that there is a relationship between the uneven
application of international and national regulations in oil production by MNCs and
environmental degradation as well as the negative effect on people’s live and means of
livelihood, resulting in competition for scarce resources, which in turn have exacerbated
ethnic conflict between and among communities. Consequently, the main questions
addressed in the study focus on if, how, and why globalization, carried out through the
activities of MNCs, affects ethnic tension, class struggle, and gender inequality. In order
to address the questions, a critical ethnographic paradigm was used to explore and
explain the processes of globalization that affect the people’s lives and means of
livelihood. Since this study’s focus is on a neglected population (Obelle and Obagi
communities), a critical ethnographic paradigm was used to speak on behalf of the
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subjects as a means of empowering them by giving more authority to their voices.
Consequently, this study has the possibility of not only speaking about the
marginalization of the people of Obelle and Obagi communities and their livelihood but,
also, speaking on their behalf in order to increase awareness of their present economic
situation, aiming at the general improvement of their economic situation and quality of
life. This study, therefore, provided the subjects an opportunity to articulate their
economic problems and share their lived experiences in a region that has been
devastated by the activities of oil MNCs.
Data were collected and analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative
methods. The specific methods used in data collection included in-depth interviews,
questionnaires, and observation. Analysis of the data was done by employing a variety
of methods that includes a combination of descriptive statistics based on crosstabulation,
analysis of themes that emerged from in-depth interviews, and Atlas.ti 5.0
qualitative analysis computer programme to show the relationship between variables that
emerged from the study.
The results obtained from the study support the hypothesis that the oil MNCs in
Nigeria, in partnership with the Nigerian government, have engaged in a process of
resource exploitation that has resulted in economic expropriation, political
disenfranchisement, social dislocation, anomie and environmental devastation, of the
people of the Niger Delta and Obagi/Obelle in particular.