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Regional Struggles in Colonial West Africa
Warri, a historic port town in the western Niger Delta, is now the capital city of Delta State in Southern Nigeria. In March 1997, the military government of Nigeria, under General Sani Abacha, decided to relocate the headquarters of the Warri South Local Government Council from an Ijaw community (Ogbe-Ijoh) to the neighboring Itsekiri community (Ogidigbe), setting off a series of violent clashes over the course of seven weeks. The Ijaw political elite wanted to remain in control of the southern part of Warri. The local Ijaw community resented the government's move, which effectively gave the Itsekiri elite, their long-time rivals, more political control of the city.1Control of local territory in Warri granted access to the revenue remittances from crude oil extraction in the region. The clashes following this government move displaced hundreds of people and many died. By 1999, the violence spread to neighboring towns and communities, including neighboring Urhobo communities who also had long-standing disputes with the Itsekiri over land and political power in the city.2
Why were the stakes so high that the question of who controls the local government in one section of a single city became a deadly struggle? Moreover, why did Warri's various communities use violence against each other, rather than aiming it directly at the government? If we take a longer view of this city, we see that this was not the first time the government arbitrarily redrew local government boundaries without local consensus. Nor was it the first time the communities in Warri reacted violently to this type of intervention. In fact, successive governments in Nigeria, from the colonial period to the present, have strategically exploited the very local and contentious battle over communal claims to indigeneity, and therefore authority over local government affairs in Warri. Claims to indigeneity conformed to the rules of ethnicized communal politics that have become customary in Nigeria. In the 1990s, dictator Sani Abacha's government sought out local allies (the Itsekiri elite) in the face of mounting opposition from a beleaguered Ijaw community, which was becoming increasingly militant against environmental abuse by multinational oil corporations in collaboration with the Nigerian government.3In this case, the government used the Itsekiri community to marginalize...