Abstract

Suppression of revolt and rebellion in the Niger delta region is the most violent part of the history of Nigeria as no other part of the country has lost so much of its peoples’ blood than the region in the national question of whether to belong to the country or whether its enormous resources have been of any benefit to its people. Since the finding of oil in the region the conflict of who gets what, how and when has remain touchy. When the military receded and enthroned the fourth republic, the Niger delta people and their states took to the offensive in resource control agitation believing that what the military had kept under rap can now be uncovered and questioned. When all manners of negotiations, appeals, litigations, demonstrations, conferences, symposium, studies, and shows failed, oil militancy took the centre-ground. The militants bugged down the Federal government and extracted an amnesty reprieve while shut-in of over 70 percent of its oil out-put crippled the government. The epoch threw up the dramatis persona of Tompolo, Dokubo, Ateke and Boyloaf. They keyed into the struggle of their people using all well known ideological weapons to demonstrate that the Niger delta was being marginalized by the Federal government acting on behalf of the other major ethnic nationalities. But at the end of two decades of the struggle and representation of their people, it has become worrisome whether what actuated them into the struggle has been realized and whether the end has justified the means. This study which adopts doctrinal method surveys the question whether the treatment of being awarded amnesty and surveillance of pipe contracts has met the threshold of the emancipation of the Niger delta people which was the aim and philosophy of the struggle. Has rents and contracts to militants become the transformational agenda of the Niger delta? This study finds that a few charlatans strutting around the Niger delta have stolen the struggle of their people and colluding with the Federal government, have distorted the trajectory of the struggle. The region has found that those that came were not the ones to come or expected and is thus looking or asking for others.