CORPORATIONS
Uzochukwu Nduka
Concept: Corporations, operating in a conflict area, must take on the responsibilities for peace-keeping
It is no longer news that there is conflict, resulting in several hundreds if not thousands of violent deaths, going on in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria since the turn of the millennium. The quick conclusion most people reach from media education is that the conflict is about “bad” multinational corporations and “poor” communities. In many regards this is true, but, it is also only one tree in the forest. The Region is actually rife with conflicts at various levels and on several fronts. There are conflicts rooted in land disputes, the struggle for political power and chieftaincy titles, corruption, ethnic tensions and a good number of other factors. These conflicts are sometimes within one community, between two or more communities or between ethnic groups. On a Regional level, the communities and ethnic groups and even regional governments are aligned in conflict against the Federal Government.
The Ijaws who are about the 4th largest ethnic group in Nigeria are the arrowhead of this region-level conflict. The central issue, which has now been over layered by many others, is the continued reluctance of the Government to invest in socio-economic infrastructure and services in the Region. And the distribution of the profits is unfair.
In this very basic equation of conflict, the multinational oil companies are seen as helping to perpetuate this unfairness. The modern-day conflict engagement strategy of the Niger Delta peoples is to bring the oil and gas industry to a halt, until the Government addresses the unfairness by specific actions. Clearly, this strategy means that the multinationals are nothing but collateral damage and as far as many people from the Region are concerned this is acceptable, after all the companies have been richly-rewarded and amused-bystanders for 5 decades. Which of course is not the solution. Yet the multinationals operating in conflict-prone regions, like the Niger Delta, need to recognize not only their corporate social responsibilities, but, also their responsibility to contribute to peace-building.