ABSTRACT
Conclusion 8.1 An Overview of Emerging Issues, Perspectives and Practices A key methodological feature of this study is the application of an integrative and basic interrogative approach to the analysis of the Nigerian oil conflict and the correlated issues of security and high stake rentier politics. Most previous studies on the subject are meta-narratives based on various grand theories, including the dependency theory, the Marxist political economy approach, structural ecologism and diverse legal paradigms. In spite of their various merits (see chapters 2.2-2.3), there are three fundamental weaknesses associated with these works, which have necessitated this research. The first concerns the monolithic interpretations of a complex and multi-faceted issue as the Nigerian oil conflict offered by most studies. The second is that the dynamics of high stake rentierism within the political economy, especially as it relates to state-oil industry-society relations, and how this impacts on the conflict does not seem to have been substantially appreciated. The third and probably most critical point is the tendency to neglect issues about TNOCs’ security perspectives and practices, and even where they have been rarely appreciated, there have been some sweeping generalizations concerning the approaches and roles of the major oil companies. In this way, the specificities about how the oil conflict differently affects the various TNOCs, as well as any nuances in their approaches to the core issues of the conflict and in their relationships with the state, have tended to be either ignored or misrepresented. As this study has tried to show, unravelling and analysing these aspects of the oil conflict by critically deconstructing some of the existing macrotheoretical assumptions and meta-narrative representations are important for determining the specific roles of the different stakeholders in the evolution, prosecution and management of the conflict, what might have shifted in the nature of the conflict, and what could be done to achieve proactive conflict resolution and security sector reform. There are a range of emerging significant issues, perspectives and practices from this study associated with the key stakeholders’ discourses and orientation to the oil conflict and security threats. This section articulates, summarizes and further situates them in their logical perspectives.
