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instability for several decades. Nigeria's fi rst leader, Prime Minister Sir
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, was assassinated in 1966 and his military
successor, Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, was himself murdered
less than a year thereafter. Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon ruled
next from 1966 to 1975, when he was overthrown and fl ed the country
(Sklar 2004). His successor, Brigadier Murtala Ramat Mohammed, initi-
ated the process of moving the country's national capital from Lagos, on
Nigeria's western coast, to Abuja, centrally located inland (Moore 2008).
This sad saga, which continues in less draconian form with the recent
debilitating illness of the nation's elected president, Umaru Musa
Yar'Adua, and his replacement by the country's vice president, is impor-
tant here for what it suggests about the relative capacity of the national
government vis-à-vis the multinational corporations active in petroleum
production in Nigeria's Delta.
Organized calls for at least some measure of governance autonomy in
the Delta began in the 1940s, even before Nigeria gained independence.
Similarly, social opposition to the region's environmental despoliation
grew in the decades following Nigeria's independence alongside the
nation's continuing political turmoil (Haller, Blöchlinger, and John 2007).
Many authors have described the connections between central govern-
ment instability and the dominance of foreign corporate entities in
forming the environmental, political, and social landscape of the Niger
River Delta region (Naanen 1995; Ibrahim 2000; Boele, Fabig, and
Wheeler 2001). As early as the 1970s, production and export of petro-
leum by foreign fi rms emerged as the principal driver of the Nigerian
economy. The oil and the facilities needed to process it were (and are)
located primarily in the Niger River Delta, which is populated by a
number of minority ethnic groups who historically have farmed or fi shed
as their way of life. The area's onshore and offshore operations constitute
more than 90 percent of all petroleum-related activities in the country.
Nigeria is now Africa's largest producer of oil at 2.7 million barrels per
day as of 2006, with proven reserves estimated at 35.2 billion barrels
(United States Energy Information Administration 2007).
Nevertheless, that economic bounty has not benefi ted the region that
produces it by yielding strong development and increased wealth (Inter-
national Crisis Group 2006). Instead, while the indigenous people have
seen their home territories become host to over 600 oil wells along with
major oil transport and processing facilities, their overall living situation
has declined in real terms. Although estimates vary widely, reported spills
from high-pressure pipelines and oil transfers annually number in the
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