Paper short abstract:

Agitations about resource governance brings forth questions about why a conflict is nonviolent or violent. We have the Ogoni and the Ijaw who live in exactly the same conditions, facing the same structural issues and yet made very different trajectories and choices in expressing their grievances.

Paper long abstract:

Having reached a political crises point, the Niger Delta conflicts have attracted significant local and international concerns and responsiveness. For instance, although several theses have discussed recurring and valid structural factors of the conflict such as resource governance, marginalization, and neglect, which do serve as bases for understanding the grievances, a unique question has remained unanswered: why have the Ogoni and the Ijaw, who have shared common, lived experiences, reacted differently to the same regional problems? What explains why one has chosen violence and the other a nonviolent contestation? This paper argues that three explanatory factors: narratives, leadership and organisation have determined the dynamics of choice of the distinct courses of action taken by each groups, which in turn suggests that they have not fought a common cause. They rather have been fighting context specific battles specifically constructed and framed for their individual communities. These three factors are important for explaining the 'how' and 'why' within the political trajectories of the Ogoni and Ijaw in terms of nonviolence and violence. This more nuanced perspective provides a new context to the knowledge that each group employs distinct strategies in constructing its conflict, hence, each group works towards some context specificity of their communities.