Thesis (Ph. D. (Sociology))--Rhodes University, 2006.

Extractive industries (including oil, gas and mining) generally afford an opportunity for the host government to generate the revenue to fund sustainable growth and development. It is therefore not surprising for conventional economic theory to suggest this is a readily available revenue source for resource blessed countries. However, contrary to this reasonable expectation, several of these economies were found to be suffering a financial handicap. Nigeria, despite being the largest crude oil producer in Africa and the tenth largest in the world, has so far found realising the full financial benefits of this nature’s gift unattainable. Using both qualitative and quantitative data as well as grounded theory in the analysis of the qualitative data, this research work has been carried out to develop a model of Nigerian oil industry using System Dynamics modelling methodology in order to understand these challenges. Specifically, the research develops an System Dynamics model to capture and quantify the various potential revenue streams to the Nigerian government from the oil (petroleum) industry with the objective of providing an explanatory model of the causal factors and then using the model to construct policy experiments in order to evaluate policies that may optimise these revenues. Findings show that, the development of the model for the Nigerian oil industry was successfully undertaken. The model was used to evaluate two government policy interventions that were aimed at improving government revenue from the industry. Moreover, a range of alternative scenarios which suggested increase of transparency policy, reduction of rate of gas flare and reduction of time taken for repairs of vandalised facilities were used in the model. The relevant system actors in the Nigerian oil industry were impressed with the modelling idea, particularly in its ability to represents all the economic challenges facing the industry, which offered a better understanding of the system they are dealing with. Overall, the model was able to depict some potential policy points thus serving as a decision-making tool.

This thesis examines the social character of petroleum-related grassroots struggles in Nigeria’s oil-producing region. It does this against the background of the dominant scholarly narratives that portray the struggles as: a) a disguised pursuit of an ethnic/sectional agenda, b) a 'minority rights' project, and c) a minority province’s protest against 'selective' environmental 'victimisation' by the majority ethnic nationalities. While the dominant scholarly analyses of the struggles are based on the activities of the better known activist organisations operating in the oil region, this thesis focuses primarily on the everyday 'grammar' of discontent and lived worlds of ordinary people vis-à-vis upstream petroleum operations and petroleum resource utilisation. The aim has been to gain an understanding of the forces driving community struggles in the oil region and their wider societal significance. Examined alongside the narratives of ordinary people are the legal/institutional framework for upstream petroleum operations and the operational practices of the oil-producing companies. Using primary data obtained through ethnography, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews and visual sociology, as well as relevant secondary data, the researcher constructs a discourse matrix, showing how grassroots narratives in selected oilproducing communities intersect with contemporary civic discourses in the wider Nigerian context. The thesis highlights the theoretical and policy difficulties that arise when the social basis of petroleum-related grassroots struggles and ordinary people’s narratives are explained using an essentialist idiom. It reveals, above all, the conditions under which so-called 'locale-specific' struggles in a multi-ethnic, oil-rich African country can become a campaign for the emancipation of ordinary people in the wider society. This research extends the existing knowledge on citizen mobilisation, extractive capitalism, transnational corporate behaviour, and Nigeria’s contemporary development predicament. It sheds light on some of the processes through which ordinary people are forcing upon the state a change agenda that could drive the country along a more socially sensitive development and democratisation trajectory.