Communal Communication and the dynamics of conflict

Over the past quarter century, unrest in the Niger Delta had slowly graduated into a guerrilla-style conflict that leaves hundreds dead each year. The battle lines are drawn over the crude oil and gas that make Nigeria the number one oil producer in Africa. Impoverished residents, many of whom live practically on the doorstep of multimillion-dollar oil installations, live in a community where the essence of communalism thrives. They commune their complaints of being excluded from partaking in the prosperity that oil brings. Militancy and criminality are the convergent streams of the popular resistance that has emerged from these complaints thereby resulting to various forms of violence. Less than a year before Nigeria holds its third national elections since the end of military rule in 1999, tensions are running high in the southern Niger Delta. A number of militant groups have continued to use legitimate grievances, such as poverty, environmental destruction and government corruption, to justify increasingly damaging attacks against government and oil industry targets.