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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the oil economy in Nigeria as situated in the Niger Delta region. It examines the impact of capital accumulation on the region's population, particularly the youths. This provides the context for understanding the prevalent crisis in the region.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on Nigeria’s oil economy as situated in the Niger Delta region. Based on the Marxian strand of political economy, the context of the exploration of crude oil in Nigeria’s Niger Delta is examined, including the role of capital and the consequent accumulation by the owners of capital in the economy. The resultant crisis of capital accumulation particularly as it concerns the youths in the Niger Delta region who constitute a significant demography of the region’s population is interrogated. A variety of violent and non-violent actions by the youths in the Niger Delta have over the years been the consequences of the circumstances of accumulation in the Niger Delta. These responses by the youth population include militancy, oil bunkering, kidnapping, forming pressure groups, among others. The questions that arise from the contradictions of the crisis of accumulation include the following? What is the nature of capitalist accumulation in the Niger Delta? How has this mode of accumulation affected the nature of the state in terms of their relations with the youth of the Niger Delta? How can a new state-society relation be constructed to include and empower the youths, rather marginalize them? The paper argues that the lack of embeddedness of the state in the society in a postcolonial state like Nigeria, its location within the global capitalist economy and the prebendal nature of its elites create conditions that continue to disempower rather than empower the youths of the Niger Delta.

Keywords: Niger Delta, Youths, Accumulation, Exploitation, Crisis