Criminal Resistance? The Politics of Kidnapping of Oil Workers in Nigeria

Militias specializing in kidnapping oil workers and vandalizing oil infrastructure purportedly as a form of protest against marginalization by the state and transnational oil corporations are rife in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. This study interrogates the interstitial space between legitimate protest and criminal expropriation in that region.;The data for this project draws upon extensive fieldwork in Nigeria. This includes interviews and focus group discussions with six sets of actors, including community groups, politicians, military officials and insurgents. I also analyze official statements from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), the group allegedly spearheading these kidnappings. This data provides insights into how MEND seeks to frame the insurgency as a form of protest.;My analysis demonstrates that impression management pervades kidnapping episodes. The major concern of the Nigerian state is to provide an atmosphere that is sufficiently safe for oil extraction while several insurgent commanders have succeeded in inventing an alternative political structure for accessing the conventional structures of society. For others, kidnapping is a dangerous but innovative means of livelihood in a perpetually depressed economy. While the insurgency generates harms for the oil-producing communities, it also creates benefits for some participants. The diffusion of opportunities for self-enrichment among institutional and non-institutional actors suggests that kidnapping in the Delta occasionally serves a public good. The combined actions of those who support the existing order alongside the (often violent) challengers has resulted in a synthetic statics which both paradoxically harms and benefits all parties.;Insurgents seek to portray the situation in the Niger Delta as a form of war and oil workers as enemy combatants. This metaphor of war is used to frame their violent actions as a form of justifiable repertoire of protest.