Responding Creatively to Faulty Corporate Social Responsibility Practices: The Case of Nigeria’s Niger Delta

Abstract

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), in the Niger Delta of Nigeria has left significant impacts on the local communities. While analysts have explained how CSR has either succeeded or failed in this oil rich zone, over the years, their analyses, however, are yet to highlight sufficiently, the extent to which the responses to CSR practices have either strengthened or weakened the processes and practices of CSR. What are the implications of such responses for CSR theory and practice. A field visit to the Niger Delta shows that local communities have had to modify their traditional alliances and practices in order to sustain the flow of the share of oil wealth accessible to them via CSR. This creative response to faulty CSR practices stems possible violent reactions against the transnational corporations and/or the state government as much as it encourages the sustenance of CSR in the community. Besides, it highlights the fact that the substitution of ‘long term value maximization’ for ‘short-term profit at any cost’ in the corporate vocabulary notwithstanding, corporate conception and practice of CSR hardly excludes window dressing.

1. Introduction

The local communities of the Niger Delta have in no insignificant way benefited from the oil extraction business through Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)—a concept that has remained embryonic and contested¹ both in theory and practice. Many of the communities can boast of additional school blocks, civic centers, paved roads, potable water, healthcare facilities, etc. courtesy of the oil companies. Indeed, the oil business through CSR have made remarkable impacts on the local communities of the Delta.

There is no intention to blow the trumpet of CSR by recounting all of its benefits in this chapter. Many analysts have x-rayed such benefits even as they left significant remarks and recommendations as to how to improve CSR in the Delta. Idemudia [3, 4, 5], as well as Idemudia and Ite [6], believe that CSR has the potential to enhance resource extraction in the Delta if only greater attention can be paid to environmental concerns through greater emphasis on issues relating to CSR. In other words, a more peaceful atmosphere for resource extraction can be guaranteed through an approach to CSR that emphasizes environmental questions. Renouard and Lado [7] remark that CSR in the Delta will be more successful if it can deal decisively with the challenge of achieving sustainable development in a context of acute inequalities. Other analysts, such as Aaron and Patrick [8] and Nwankwo [9] link the conflict in the Delta to faulty approaches to CSR. They consider sound CSR policies and practices free from inadequacies as a significant remedy.

What will be discussed in this chapter however, is the extent to which the reception or rejection of CSR approach by local communities have either strengthened or weakened the CSR processes and delivery. Are there significant implications of such reception or rejection for CSR theory and practice? What might constitute the remedies, if any?

1.1 Methodology

Local communities in the Niger Delta have responded to CSR in different ways. Many have accepted the packages they receive in their original shape and size, enjoying and enduring all the benefits and negative impacts respectively. Others have rejected the packages delivered to them as CSR, for being inadequate or insufficient. They deploy assorted violent means to register their rejection. There are yet others who have creatively engaged the CSR packages thrown at them. Rather than endure their negative impacts, they opt to modify their traditional alliances and practices either to stem or to ameliorate the violence across the Niger Delta. Obufia, a community in Egbema of Imo State, is one of such communities. The members of Obufia, as will be detailed in the coming sections, opted to modify their traditional alliances and practices to sustain the benefits of CSR which reach them in different forms.

That the conflict across the Delta fed into by CSR policies and practices has remained manageable is to be significantly attributed to the creative initiatives of communities such as Obufia. In other words, by some stroke of ingenuity local communities have muted the volatile effects of deficient CSR policies and practices. This deficiency in practice has its roots in the sociopolitical complexities associated with the global production network of oil. A remarkable theoretical implication of this is that it highlights the fact that despite the progress recorded in the substitution of ‘short-term profit at any cost’ for ‘long term value maximization’ in the corporate vocabulary, the general conception of CSR hardly excludes window dressing [10].

For years the discourse of CSR has been dominated by two opposing theories, though some prefer to classify CSR theories and approaches in four groups—political, instrumental, integrative and ethical [11]. There is on the one hand the theory attributed mainly to Friedman [12], who maintains that the social responsibility of business is nothing more than maximizing profits for shareholders. On the other hand is the view that business has the obligation to provide certain social services beside accumulating profit. These parallel theories appear to have been abridged when Carroll [13] suggested that the responsibility of the firm to maximize shareholder profit is merely a bottom line. Business, he insisted, has legal, ethical and philanthropic obligations as it were. The dawn of globalization ushered in a proliferation of transnational corporations across the world. This expansion is not matched with a supranational monitor of corporate activities. This implies that to be reckoned with corporations will not only assume the obligation of providing social services but also engage in its actual implementation. A new challenge yet emerges; how do corporations determine the extent to which focus on social welfare affects profit maximization? Though this challenge has not yet been surmounted completely, CSR is now as institutionalized as to warrant that companies in mature economies have CSR departments [10].

With the modification of the notion of shareholder wealth, many scholars have come to believe that maximizing profit can be done in a socially responsible manner [14]. Jensen [15] introduces the enlightened value maximization as a concept that reconciles the conflict between shareholder value and social responsibility. This concept incorporates aspects of the stakeholder theory even as it locates business’ foremost objective on long-term value maximization [10]. Before the champagne is puffed over the definitive resolution of the theoretical controversies surrounding CSR, it is important to issue guidance for managerial decisions in situations where tradeoffs are to be made between competing stakeholders. “Managers, for example, might potentially seek to maximize their own utility at the expense of the shareholders’ interests, all of which does not necessarily enhance the company’s long-term value” [10]. Hence, there is yet some green washing and window dressing especially in the practice of CSR despite the seeming definitive substitution of the notion of ‘long-term value maximization’ for ‘short-term profit at any cost’. The insensitivity of oil Transcorps to local community values in their practice of CSR, the details of which will be given in the coming sections augments this position. The oil Transcorps are caught between serving the interest of the shareholders and meeting their social obligation to the local communities. Even if the these corporations prioritize their long-term value in their CSR practices, the socio-political and economic forces peculiar to developing oil producing countries—the oil complex—frustrate their efforts further.

This conclusion follows from a nine-month ethnographic study of Obufia, one of the local communities in the Niger Delta. Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) operates the oil wells in Obufia and this has been the case since the early days of oil explorations in Nigeria in the late 1950s. During the ethnographic study, data was collected from the Obufia Town Union, the traditional ruler, the Obufia Youth Association and the Obufia Women Association, which have kept a relationship in different degrees and capacities with the Transcorp and the State government. Data was also collected from the staff of the SPDC, especially the public relations officer. All data was collected via participant observation and interviews—structured and semi-structured. Data analysis was accomplished through a post-structuralist relational placemaking framework designed by Pierce, Martin, and Murphy [16].

The Niger Delta is examined as a place of placemaking projects, in which the politics of placemaking is played by groups and interests who attach different meanings to the oil rich physical space. Cheng, Kruger and Daniels [17] cite the example of different potentials of an open field as imagined by a farmer, a hunter, and a developer. The developer sees the open field as ‘suburban home sites’, the farmer sees it as ‘endless rows of wheat’, and the hunter sees it as ‘grazing grounds for five-point buck’. Thus, the Niger Delta can be seen as one of the global oil and gas resource reservoirs that must be managed on a worldwide scale for the benefit of all. It can as well be seen as nothing more than a lived or inhabited environment. In that case, the oil and gas resources become part of the natural endowments to be engaged in the same manner as other natural resources, such as water, land, plants, etc. The significance of oil to global economy implies that a lot of wealth is generated from it. Everyone wants a piece of this wealth. A focus on the distribution and privatization channels of the oil wealth using the analytical framework introduced by Pierce, Martin, and Murphy [16] can lead to a good grasp of the technique actors bring into the scramble for the oil wealth. CSR is one of the distribution channels and actors representing the local communities benefit from it and endeavor sustain it.

The rest of the discussion will proceed as follows. In the next section, a brief overview of Obufia and how the oil extraction economy has affected it will be given. This will be followed by a short history of CSR in Obufia beginning from the earliest days of oil discovery in and around the properties belonging to the community. How CSR has evolved over time to arrive at where it is presently will also be featured. Next is a focus on the principal shortcomings of CSR approaches, which is democratic deficiency or lack of participation. This will be accompanied by a spotlight on the forces that need to be factored in when decrying the lack of participation in the delivery of CSR. Finally, it will be concluded that unless there is a drop in global interest in oil or a change of the method of oil acquisition by the global super powers, CSR will continue to encounter problems. The gains in the harmonization of wealth maximization and social welfare in the concept of enlightened value maximization is merely utopia.

2. Obufia community since oil extraction

Obufia is one of the 16 communities, which comprise Egbema. While three of the communities are in Rivers State, the rest are in Imo State. A few features may be identified as common to these communities in Egbema. There are visible lines of pipelines crisscrossing the terrains, a good number of which are dilapidated and abandoned. Apart from that, oil wells can still be found across the communities. Some of them are still productive, while others are dried up. There are some communities that host flow stations of the oil firms operating in the area. Some of these flow stations have gas flaring sites as well, and are often fenced with barbed wires and perimeter fences to restrict movement around them.

On its own, Obufia has some peculiar features. Despite that official population figures hardly exist, by 2006 the population census of Ohaji/Egbema LGA, to which Obufia belongs, places it at about 183,000 (One hundred and eighty-three thousand). Roughly however, the population of Obufia may be placed at about 18–10,000. Obufia, or any other autonomous community in Egbema-Imo may not be correctly depicted as ethnically mixed. About 98 percent of the population is Igbo speaking. Less than 8 percent of this majority, may be regarded as outsiders in Obufia, having not been either born, or adopted into the community. In other words, only about 8 percent of the local population of Egbema-Imo belong to the category of the people, whom those born or adopted into any Egbema community regard as Ụmụisu. Ụmụisu (Literally, descendants of Isu) refers to another Igbo group found around the Orlu axis of Imo State. The Egbema tradition has it that the Isu people came into Egbema for business reasons. Such businesses included collecting wild vegetable, ọkazị/ọkashị, and palm fruits. Others included fishing, or engaging in jobs, which the local people were not very adept at. The manual cultivation of farmland is one example of such jobs. Overtime, the term came to be applied to every other ethnic Igbo, who is neither born to or adopted in any Egbema community.

The rest of the population in Obufia are non-Igbo speaking people who are hired by the oil companies. They also include people who have been employed by privately owned establishments in Obufia, such as schools or grain mills. People who engage in assorted forms of small-scale business, such as dry meat (suya) vending, or hawking of articles of assorted kinds belong to this category as well. Most times these hawkers either head-load these articles, or carry them in push-trucks. Within Obufia, or any other community in Egbema-Imo, one does not expect to hear people carrying out conversations in English, as may be the case in several places across Nigeria, where the population is ethnically mixed.

SPDC yard, locally known as Location is situated in Obiakpu, a neighboring community to Obufia, both in Egbema. The Location is less than two miles from the border of Obufia and Obiakpu. SPDC has several oil wells, flowstations and pipelines—both underground and over ground—within Obufia. This is the major factor connecting SPDC and the rest of the communities in Egbema.

The community has all but a few of its narrow streets richly coated with quality nylon tar. The access road into the community from the nearest city, which is also the highway connecting the community to other Egbema communities in Rivers State, is hardly in any condition comparable in quality to the narrowly paved streets within the community. For the most part, the narrow highway was dotted by potholes, making motoring cumbersome. The community also has a very nicely built state managed secondary school, and a not-so-good looking state owned primary school. There are a few other privately owned schools there as well. Many potable water points are quite conspicuous across the community. Some of these water points were constructed and handed over to the community, courtesy of SPDC. Some were connected to boreholes drilled in private homes. Thus, access to water by members of the community is not so difficult. Quite recently, the town has added a magnificent civic centre, alongside a community health clinic to its credit. Most of these modern facilities came courtesy of the oil business taking place in the community. They would have been funded by either the SPDC or the special state commissions such as the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the Imo State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (ISOPADEC). Obufia community has also benefited from the oil companies and the special commissions in other ways. SPDC has constructed a town hall and awards scholarships to successful Obufia secondary school leavers each year, just as it liaises with different associations of the community for development.

I came into this field intending to observe and interview the actors I believed were implicated in one way or the other by the oil extraction business and sundry activities connected to it. Deploying purposive sampling method, I examined actors such as the SPDC public relations officer, the traditional ruler, and state representatives in the community, including the Local Government Chairman, and the community representative at the State House of Assembly. It means that these were significant to the objectives of my study. Apart from the latter, other figures that I considered directly implicated in the oil extraction issues, included state political office holders, and officers in the special state commissions—ISOPADEC and NDDC—established for the Niger Delta.

3. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Obufia

Transnational corporations in the Niger Delta have been involved in CSR from the inception of oil business in the resource rich zone. This has evolved through three main phases namely; the pay-as-you-go, community assistance/community development, and corporate-community involvement phases [3, 18]. In the pay-as-you-go phase, oil companies gave local communities a one-time gift as they deemed fit. Such gifts were restricted to communities in which oil wells are located or through which oil pipelines passed. The idea was not only to fulfill their social welfare obligation but also to keep the communities as far from the activities of the companies as possible.

With regard to the community assistance/community development phase, oil companies assisted communities with the provision of basic social amenities such as potable water, electricity supply, road construction, school blocks construction, healthcare facilities, skill acquisition centres, etc. The idea behind this was to curtail the vicious cycle of protests, repression and conflict that was generated by a long period of pay-as-you-go with the local communities not receiving any substantial benefits from it. This second approach did not solve the problem because, its poor community participation, lack of project sustainability and tendency to generate intra-community and inter-community violence necessitated a third approach. Although the third phase—corporate-community involvement—provides for more local participation, it is yet to go round and even in the areas it has been implemented, questions of authentic participation still loom large.

This approach involves the formation of some central coordinating councils that will be liaising with oil multinationals, where as some NGOs are engaged, sometimes to play the negotiating and monitoring role in a process that ends up producing a Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU).

The CSR approach begins with the identification of communities in which oil deposits are found—oil bearing communities—or in which heavy exploration impact is made—communities suffering either directly or remotely from oil exploration². The NGO will assist in identifying the communities that qualify as such. These communities are assisted to form a cluster of communities by way of regionalization. The communities then work out a plan of development in which they indicate the projects they would want to be assisted to accomplish. This plan is then presented to the oil multinationals operating in the communities for approval and endorsement. The emerging document becomes the global memorandum of understanding. Once a GMoU is signed, a Regional Development Council (RDC) or the Cluster Trust Board (CTB) is formed. This council or board becomes the liaison between the oil multinationals and the communities.

In the next section, I will demonstrate in detail via ethnographic findings how these CSR approaches have impacted on the local communities and how the local communities creatively responded to cushion the backlashes of the CSR approaches. I will show that the emergence of Obufia autonomous community from Egbema was the result of the people’s creative capacity in a bid to cushion the backlash of CSR. This creativity was a bricolage whereby state policy reforms on the local government and legendary migration traditions form useful tools.

In sum, the different phases of CSR in the Niger Delta have had the potential to generate violent conflicts due mainly to their democratic deficiency. Feeding into this deficiency are some of the forces implicated in the oil complex, which become manifest in varied ways in the corporate-community relations or in the state-community relations. However, the tendency of CSR to generate conflict is curtailed by the capacity of some communities especially among the Igbo of Niger Delta to be creative. This creative capacity needs to be emphasized as a conflict reduction strategy and due credit accorded the creative community choosing it as an option.

4. CSR’s backlash and the creative response from Obufia community

The pay-as-you-go approach to CSR was adopted by Shell sometime in 1984 in Egbema. At that time, Shell offered the local youths some money to keep them off their business activities in the oilfields located within the community. This money destroyed more than it constructed. Chief Clarus Mgbe, who doubled as a traditional chief of Mgbara and a long serving employee of SPDC recounted the ripples caused by this money in these words:

Shell gave 800,000 naira [about $3,500.00] to the youths through Nzobi…This money caused so much trouble. The youths almost forced him out of the palace. This was because the money was not judiciously utilized. He capitalized on the [factionalized] leadership of the community. At that time, the clamour for autonomous communities factionalized the youths… The Egbma leader divided the youths into two; one group he proclaimed as belonging to oil producing communities. The other he dismissed as having no business with oil. He collected his own share of the money and gave the rest to the youth faction that he identified as belonging to oil producing communities. This caused serious trouble. There was no kind of management at all…He wanted to be the sole representative of the community. He did not want anyone there.

Some background information will certainly do comprehension of the pertinent issues here a world of good. In response to the nationwide local government reforms in 1976, 13 different communities that identified with Egbema opted to federate under a single traditional ruler. The man, who became the traditional ruler, was Chief SNA Uzo taking the title of Nzobi 1 of Egbema. Chief Uzo remained in this position until his death in 2008.

Federating under a central authority was not purely a deliberate choice of Egbema people. Certain requirements were to be met, for any group to qualify as an autonomous community. One of such requirements was the size of the group. Most of the federating groups could not meet this requirement as separate groups. So, the motivation for the federation was one of expediency, implying that the federating groups retained most of their traditional practices. It was only the practices they held in common that were left in the custodianship and oversight of the traditional ruler. Thus, the federating groups could form separate associations, such as community students’ union or community development association, independent of the traditional ruler without seriously hurting the homogeneity of the federation.

Questions regarding the need for a community development association when there is a traditional ruler can also be responded to from this point of view. This association was formed in response to the trend across local communities in the former Eastern Region at the time. Each autonomous community had its own development association commonly regarded as hometown association or union. These were generally understood as mobilizing for self-help and community development [20]. The development association may defer to the traditional ruler, but the traditional ruler can just as well ignore the association.

Their recognition by the state accords traditional rulers such privileges as ‘courtesy calls’, usually paid by visiting State Governors and other state officials [21]. The strong political weight—opportunity to voice their support for, or criticism of, any government policy—which such privileges place on the traditional rulers imply that those of them who are very ambitious could capitalize on these privileges to advance personal interests. This was exactly what Chief Nzobi did.

During my interview with Orams, a one-time secretary of the Obufia Town Union, I was told that the locals nicknamed Chief Nzobi ‘Osama bin Laden’. They accused him of showing strong aversion for any form of confrontation even as he always insisted on having every deliberation of issues relating to the community, including those assigned to a committee within his palace. He would go to any length to push his decision on any subject irrespective of the strength of the opposition’s view. Another informant called Chidi, saw him as a ruler who ‘was sitting on everything meant for the community’. Chidi was once a secretary of Obufia Youth Organization.

Nevertheless, Nzobi’s actions regarding the money from Shell to the youths led to the collapse of the Egbema and its experiment of federating under a single head. Invariably those actions depicted him as someone who was oblivious of the fact that his jurisdiction was a federation of ‘communities’. Within such a diverse political arrangement, strong opposition to offensive moves such as the diversion of designated funds cannot be ruled out. Once people are fed up, they react. This happened to be the case as evident from the account of the emergence of Obufia from Egbema.

The foundation of what emerged as Obufia autonomous community was laid by a set of university undergraduates who claimed to have worked with some ‘elders of good will’—older relatives of these students, who were willing to cooperate with them. Below is a detailed account of how the emergence evolved. According to JCA Hakot, a member of the Obufia Town Union;

Obufia Town Union formed…April 1984, was a brainchild of Obufia students…at Port Harcourt…It was named Peoples Voice Movement (PVM). It was made up of 22 members, out of which 14 were Obufia students’ union members and eight elders of good will. The PVM continued meeting regularly mainly during holidays to address the perceived anomalies [inhibiting the relationship between] SPDC [and] the people of Obufia [fed into by the] obnoxious leadership in Egbema then. [In] December 1984…it changed to Obufia Town Union and got registered with the…LGA and ministry of Local Government, Chieftaincy and Town Unions…With the registration [duly] completed…the Union went into action to address SPDC and Egbema leadership on the non-provision of basic life amenities and infrastructures to Obufia in particular, and Egbema in general. This agitation and failure of SPDC to…address the aforementioned issues raised by the Union…led to…Obufia people’s revolt against SPDC…on August 6 1986. The failure of the demonstrations and negotiations…with…SPDC to agree to any particular project…orchestrated by HRH Eze SNA Uzo, Nzobi of Egbema, [coupled with] the subsequent suspension of…the secretary of the Egbema Community Development Association from the [aforementioned] negotiations, made the good people of Obufia to start in full swing the quest for independence status for the community…It was agreed unanimously in a general meeting of the Obufia Town Union that the 31st day of December, every year be set aside as Obufia Independence Anniversary day…

From this account, it is obvious that disagreements over the manner of CSR delivery were behind the emergence of the Obufia Town Union. The weakness of this manner of reaching out to the local community as part of the company’s fulfillment of their social and environmental obligations to the society manifested clearly in Egbema, where the traditional ruler politicized the oil rents accruing to his community. Getting a share of the rents in this instance was not anything being a member of the community alone could guarantee. One was expected to be loyal to the traditional ruler as well. But loyalty is supposed to be earned and not bought, and this is what the Obufia agitators tried to put across to Nzobi. It is also clear that it was a group of university students that took the initiative to commence the agitation that eventually evolved into the town union. Several of them were also members of the community development association under Nzobi. What remains to be explained is how the students constructed the identity of Obufia.

Oral traditions which are now preserved in written forms, show that what is now regarded as the autonomous community of Obufia, was a construct from different histories of migration and settlement. The written version of the oral traditions, testifies to the fact that Obufia is a community that is constituted by people who migrated from different places, both from within and outside Egbema, together with the remnant of the people whose ancestors migrated from Ogee in Benin [22]. The founding settlers, Uwadi [22] further recounts, welcomed migrants from other places to settle and establish their own compounds. These sets of settlers in the area have so mixed up that it has become difficult to trace the lineage of the original settlers in the community. Thus, those who assume that they are descendants of the first settlers can as well be people who have no blood ties with the latter [22].

Nonetheless, to establish a separate autonomous community the university undergraduates along with their older relatives took advantage of the absence of the descendants of Obufia, as the founding settler was called. By establishing the connection between the deities worshiped by the founding settlers to those worshipped across the riverine Igbo, they were able to connect kindred to two main lineage lines—Meyi and Deyi. This kind of lineage formation is not an isolated case. It is also to be found among some other riverine Igbo groups such as Onitsha [23]. With this lineage formation, a constitutional arrangement by which local political offices are alternated between Ụmụmeyi (descendants of Meyi) and Ụmụdeyi (descendants of Deyi) was introduced. The community has kept faith with this arrangement which helps them to stem conflicts ever since.

What we see here is the effect of pay-as-you-go approach of CSR. Money paid to keep off youths from oil business activities snowballed into the disintegration of a federation of communities. Thanks to the ingenuity of those Obufia students and their elders, who were quick to negotiate a peaceful exit with a well crafted initiative. In the absence of such creativity, the story could have been different. When analysts insist that CSR approaches feed into the conflict in the resource extraction zone, as mentioned above [8, 9], it begins to make more sense. One might argue that the deficiencies of pay-as-you-go approach adopted in this case have been duly addressed in the improved versions of CSR approach, especially the Corporate-Community involvement approach. However serious questions have equally been raised against the latter approach.

According to Adunbi [19], the approach as obtained during the period of his study is fraught with deficiencies. First, by reshaping communities into clusters, which do not necessarily follow official state boundaries, or the notions of clan affinity, the conceptualization of identity and citizenship within these communities are arbitrarily altered. Secondly, the amount of money, which is to be made available for the implementation of the projects is hardly any subject of negotiations involving the communities. There is still serious imbalance in power relations. Thirdly, given that allocations for project implementation are usually blanket and non-negotiable, there could be an uneven development. Upland communities will receive better quality roads than communities formed around creeks. Fourthly, there is nothing in the arrangement obliging the multinationals to disclose the number of barrels of oil they produce from each community, which has to be part of the criteria for establishing clusters [19]. Fifth, and most importantly, the local communities have no say in deciding the goal and objectives of the resource economy, either do they contribute to legal framing of the operation and production of petroleum resources.

In the end, none of the CSR approaches is reliable; neither the pay-as-you-go nor the corporate-community involvement as seen above works so well. If the community assistance/community development worked well, there would have been no need to introduce the corporate-community involvement at all. What is so common about these approaches is their democratic deficiency. Local participation in the CSR approaches is inadequate, due mainly to the dust participation as a concept raises.

5. Participation

Participation is certainly a concept with a wide range of use and meanings [24] and has remained a difficult concept to pin down to a single definition if not a vague concept altogether as Crocker [25], recognizes with reference to Agarwal [26], and Alkire [27]. Chambers [28] is worried that even among academics who ought to know better, there is growing imprecise usage of the concept of participation. Often, its meaning is rendered to correspond to the interest defining it. Chambers [28] in a bid to cite examples of participation, presents two streams of initiatives, communication, and resources³ identifiable in East Africa during the 1960s. These were the top-down and the bottom-up streams.

Chambers [28] narrates that in a certain East African community certain initiatives, communication and resources were generated from forums that were formed to facilitate discussions concerning development matters between local level staff and political leaders. The participants of these forums were members of what is called development committees. These forums were either large political forums or smaller concentrations of civil servants. During these forums, the chairman in skillful rhetoric, would enumerate certain identified social needs, and put forward the methods and techniques to address them. The other members would either support the chairman’s ideas or augment them constructively offering little or no resistance to the ideas tabled. In another instance, responses to general social needs come in the form of block grants⁴, which might be funds set aside for development purposes or Official Development Assistance (ODA). When the local development committees received such funds, they would undertake some action. One of the actions would be to commit the fund to development initiatives. This happened often with a lot of shortcomings.

These two instances are categorized as top-down. The determining factor of people’s participation in a top-down stream is pinned down to the composition of membership and procedures governing the operation, resources, nature and strength of popular demands including the local institutions and interest groups through which they are articulated. The procedures, which Chambers refers to are quite complex and vary from one case of participation to another. However, from what is described above, one thing that appears obvious is that the stream of initiative, communication and resources flows from top to down. That is from a ‘generous elite’ to a ‘humble local non-elite receiver’.

Another stream of initiatives, communication and resources occurred whenever the government or parties fell short of fulfilling the aspirations of the people. There seems to be a rise and vigor of self-help projects in reaction to an impotent leadership. In the absence of alternative effective and reliable means of getting what they want, “clans, churches and other groupings have identified themselves, organized, worked and competed for government and other external resources” [28].

Chambers sites the example of the mabati groups of women, which began by “working together to raise funds to put iron (mabati) roofs on their members’ houses”. From there “they moved on to buying grade cattle, fencing dips, building better kitchens and demanding the services of community development, health, veterinary and home economics staff” [28].

Self-help instances of this kind are valuable in providing opportunities for development and releasing pressure on overextended government agencies. They are also valuable in increasing the competence and confidence of a group and its members in handling their affairs. It equally shows how one success can lead to another. These are some examples of what is referred to as participatory development. Chambers identifies the problems that may be associated with participation both at a top-down and at the bottom-up streams. At the top-down stream is primarily, the inability of the committee forums to diversify decision-making. This is coupled with the inability of the committee to find the right balance to the sums involved. There is then the problem of control of the devolution of the funds down the hierarchy.

At the bottom-up stream, the problem is mainly associated with the government. It is discussed under four different headings including: control and planning; authoritarianism; implementation; and operation and maintenance [28]. The summary is that when initiatives are taken from local communities, the government feels threatened. The threat is often about the possibility of such community mobilizations escalating to a more political agitation that might lead to an attempt to wrest power from the government. However, Chambers goes on to speak about bad self-help and the need for administrative control and mediation in self-help. In the same vein, he speaks of avoidance of ‘top-down targetry’, which has to do with extortion and exploitation of people in the name of self-help. These are some of the problems associated with participation.

Chambers [28] proposes a number of measures to address these problem issues. These range from rules that may guide the allocation of funds in accordance with the measure of access to population (access to greater population should take precedence), to contributions to projects (it should be considered in relation to economic status). They also range from policies for participation (to be considered in relation to the stage of development), to radical orientation of staff activities, (those highly developed stage areas require this more). Finally, they range from tackling of the problem of invisibility of poverty to field staff by preparatory work, to design testing and modification of procedures.

Both the top-down and the bottom-up streams of participation are burdened with difficulties, raising questions as to whether participation is a means or an end in itself? Is it an academic concept or a truly empowering process necessary for the reduction of the imbalance in the global resource distribution and access? Is it to be conceived as having all stakeholders take part in decision-making or is it some kind of technique for extracting local knowledge in order to design widely applicable programs? Ray Jennings [29] remarks though that differences in definitions and methods or approaches to participation notwithstanding, there is certain agreement on what is to be construed as genuine or authentic participation. According to him,

Participation refers to involvement by local populations in creation, content and conduct of a program or policy designed to change their lives. Participation requires recognition and use of local capacities and avoids the imposition of priorities from the outside. It increases the odds that a program will be on target and its results will more likely be sustainable. Ultimately, [it] is driven by a belief in the importance of entrusting citizens with the responsibility to shape their own future [29].

This definition raises some issues which require closer examination. To start with, there is the issue relating to the phrase ‘designed to change their lives’. This is based largely on the presupposition that people’s lives need to be changed. It has to be remarked though that, if the people decided to change their lives on their own, there may be no need to speak about participation in the sense it is spoken of by Jennings. If however, the initiative to change the people’s lives comes from an outsider, one wonders where the justification for such an intervention lies indeed. This is an issue more complex than the scope of this work. Nonetheless, Jennings has provided us with a working definition of participation. More importantly, it opens up the aspect of participation that presupposes a belief in the importance of leaving citizens with the responsibility of charting the course of their own future. This is crucial about participation.

Understood in this way, participation may no longer be misconstrued as: consultation—referring to people for information and their opinions; involvement—having people included as a necessary part of some exercise or engagement; citizenship—having full membership of community, which involves the civil right to freedom; and community action—any activity undertaken by a community to effect change [30]. According to Frances Cleaver [31, 32], it is conceptually underpinned as an end other than a means. As an end it is about empowerment. Hence, a process that enhances the capacity of a group of people to improve or change their own lives.

Furthermore, Cleaver [31] discloses that discourses of development concerned with visible and manageable manifestations of collective action are often clothed in the rhetoric of empowerment. But, there is also another dimension to empowerment, which is termed radical empowerment. This is associated with individual and collective actions geared towards the transformation of structures of subordination, through radical changes in law, property rights, and the institutions of society. It implies that development practitioners will work with poor people to engage in active struggle for change. She also observes that we need to conceptualize participation in as much broad way as to facilitate the analyses of the connection between intervention, participation and empowerment. People’s lives differ from project. Due to the linkages of people’s livelihood, an impact on one area is likely to be felt in other areas. There is the potentiality of unintended consequences arising from intended interventions.

It means that when interventions are taken away from narrow approaches, there seems to be some recognition of the interlinkages of livelihoods. This gives social capital a prominent position in CSR. Unfortunately, CSR has barely acknowledged this interlinkages of livelihood and has always played down on participation as radical empowerment and leaving the responsibility of charting the course of their own future in people’s hands. The backlash of CSR in Obufia is a pointer to the dangers associated with playing down on participation as radical empowerment. Why indeed is this the case? Why are CSR approaches in the oil extraction zones so deficient in this aspect? To find the answer to this question, we must appeal to the global production network of oil where the forces behind the lack of local participation can be identified.

6. CSR in the global production network of oil

To understand the global production network of the oil sector to which the approaches to CSR in the Niger Delta are connected, it is important to reflect on two significant aspects. There is on the one hand the oil complex, and on the other the petro-state—the national organization of the oil producing states. The structure and dynamics of these two aspects of the oil sector provides the frame within which the politics of oil can best be comprehended [33]. They are examined as follows in detail.

6.1 The oil complex

What is regarded as the oil complex is very much interwoven with the global production network of oil. Its roots is to be located in events that took place as far back as the 1930s, especially the radical changes that occurred in the oil industry. The nationalism of the 1930s which culminated in the formation of OPEC in 1960 combined with the oil boom of the 1970s to bring remarkable changes upon the oil industry. There was a radical shift from the ‘Great Cartel’ system dominated by three trans-Atlantic companies, to ‘limited flow’ arrangements of the post 1970s [34, 35]. By way of definition, the oil complex can be said to be a configuration of socio-political and economic forces peculiar to developing oil producing countries [33].

Two key elements are central to this complex. The first is the economization of security, otherwise the control of oil as an explicit part of security policy. This gives rise to a close alignment between oil, finance and weapons of war, and de facto to a close connection between oil security as a strategic concern and various forms of conflict. The second is the United States’ global oil acquisition strategy. This confers on the petro-state a central significance within the international political economy of oil, which the US dominates through her global acquisition strategy [33]. In fact, in a post 9/11 discourse shaped, until the election of Barack Obama in late 2008, by the US-led war on terror, weak states in Africa especially petro-states, have been framed as latent threats to the security of the US and the rest of the West [36]. It is therefore important to follow states such as Nigeria, Angola, etc. [37] to ensure that they take charge of the oil reservoirs in their territory and assist in delivering sufficient oil to the US and their allies. Such a state will surely keep a peculiar outlook as will be demonstrated as follows.

Watts [33] delineates the operations of the oil complex as follows. First, there is compulsory partnership between transnational and state-owned oil companies accompanying the rise of Third World nationalism. The state-owned company is typically under the direct control of the presidency and a colossal black box of malfeasance and corruption. Secondly, powerful oil Supermajors emerge and operate in complex global networks that incorporate a configuration of oil, arms, construction, and global illicit economy [33].

Thirdly, there is the profundity of construing oil supply as a national security issue, especially as part of the US hegemony [37, 38, 39]. The fourth point concerns the development of special diplomatic and military relationships between key oil producing states and the West alongside oil importing advanced capitalist East Asian states. Fifth, there is a necessity for oil companies to operate in postcolonial states that are undemocratic, repressive and weak.

Finally, the profundity of the oil, conflict, violence and war nexus implies that business operations take place in settings, where human rights violation and oil acquisition are interwoven. Seen in this way, the oil complex is a political and economic calculation that overlaps with the notion of the petro-state, without being identical to the latter. What then is the petro-state?

6.2 The petro-state

The petro-state is a state which has taken a peculiar organizational structure following its oil wealth. Five key institutional elements stand at the heart of this state [33, 39, 40]. First, there is a statutory monopoly over mineral exploitation within its territory. The first point made about the operations of the oil complex that state-owned oil companies are typically under the control of the presidency and a black box of malfeasance and corruption, adds extra meaning to this. Secondly, there is the petro-state oil company—a nationalized company that operates through joint ventures with the oil Supermajors. The latter are granted territorial concessions known as oil blocks.

The third institutional element of the petro-state are security apparatuses that ensure that expensive investments are secured. These apparatuses often work in conjunction with or in complementary fashion with the private security forces of the oil companies. The fourth petro-state institutional element consists of the communities within whose customary jurisdiction are located oil fields and wells. Finally, there is a political mechanism by which oil revenues are distributed.

A mix of several forces lay over the petro-state [33, 39]. The first relates to military and other security forces which form part of the local oil complex, given the geostrategic interest in oil. The second comprises local and global civil society. These become part of the oil complex through the transnational advocacy groups concerned with human rights questions and the transparency of the oil sector. They can also enter the oil complex through disputes raised by local social movements and NGOs over the consequences of the oil industry and over accountability of the petro-state. The third force is the transnational oil business. This includes the Supermajors, the independents—oil marketing companies that are not counted among the Supermajors and the oil service industry that are actively involved in the process of local development. Their involvement can be through community development, CSR or stakeholder inclusion.

Another force is that of struggle over oil wealth, which inserts other local political forces including ethnic militias, paramilitary forces and separatist movements. The struggle is often about who owns and controls oil and who has rights over it. It is also about how the wealth is to be deployed. A fifth force is posed by the multilateral development agencies such as the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), as well as by financial corporations such as export credit agencies. These appear as key brokers in the construction and expansion of the energy sectors in oil producing states. Lately however, they have got involved in enforcing transparency among petro-governments and oil companies. A sixth final force relates to the connection between oil and the shady world of drugs, oil bunkering, mercenaries and the black economy [33, 39].

A short history of the Nigeria petro-state will help comprehension of the issues raised by Watts here. Petroleum in commercially explorable quantity was first discovered in 1956. The first oil field was at Oloibiri in the present Bayelsa state of Niger Delta. Four years after the discovery and two years after the first shipment of oil across its shores, Nigeria gained her independence from Britain. Nigeria at independence, was politically structured as a multi-ethnic regional federalist state [41]. Politicians at the time paid no more than lip-service to the ideal of national unity [42]. They were busy forging alliances to facilitate control of the central government, which gained 50 percent of the revenue from the resources generated in each region [43]. Ruling Nigeria for these politicians was not nation-building but controlling federal power and the resources of the nation [42].

Nwaorgu [44] has observed that Nigeria’s federal arrangement, hardly took any significant rules of federalism into account. One of which is that no federating unit should be predominant in any federal arrangement. But, the Northern Region of Nigeria was bigger in size and population than both the Western and Eastern Regions put together [45]. This created an imbalance in the polity in such a way that the North was using its numbers to dominate political decisions. The Northern region merely used its dominance to prevent any further domination by either the Eastern Region or any other group in the South of Nigeria. In fact, in order to reduce the imbalance, the Northern Region started taking a disproportionate share of the federal revenue, despite the fact that most of the revenue was generated in the other Regions [46].

This way of demonstrating political dominance, at a time the significance of oil resources to the national economy was becoming glaring [47, 48], only polarized the young Nigerian state along regional lines. The petroleum sector, from the 1960s onwards, assumed a leading role in the growth of national economy [49]. By the mid-1960s, petroleum export was more than two hundred thousand barrels per day [49, 50]. Regions, with their eyes on the lion’s share of the national resources, were working to outdo one another in the political game, manipulating and tampering with both census figures and election results [51]. The refusal of some Yoruba groups in the West to accept the result of the elections of 1965, which returned an Igbo as a Regional head, resulted in the formation of a parallel government in the Western Region [49]. The political crisis that erupted as a result became too bloody for the central government to handle.

Eventually, in January 1966, the military struck with a coup, killing many Northern politicians, before they were halted. The coup was led by soldiers who were Igbo speaking, though a few soldiers from the other Regions were involved as well. It was initially successful but was stopped half-way through by two other Igbo speaking soldiers, Aguiyi Ironsi in Lagos and Odumegwu Ojukwu in Kano. The dissident soldiers were rounded up and detained. Aguiyi Ironsi, the soldier who halted the coup in Lagos, would later assume the role of the Head of State.

But, the assumption of power by Ironsi, an Igbo, as the Head of state, was considered by the rest of Nigerians, especially the northerners, as an attempt by the Igbo to impose their dominance on the rest of Nigeria through the military [51]. They justified that claim by pointing to Ironsi’s introduction of a unitary government that abrogated the regional system. Thus a few months later, towards the middle of 1966, another coup, this time led by the Northern soldiers, was carried out, killing the Igbo officers, and indeed every other Igbo in sight in the North and in the West of Nigeria. This forced all the Igbo, who were residing outside of the southeast, to return to the southeast.

The mass return of the Igbo tripled the population in the southeast, making it difficult to govern. The regional government solicited support from the federal government. This was not forthcoming, forcing the governor of the region to order the oil companies in the region to divert all rents and royalties to the region [52, 53]. The federal government quickly reacted to this by dismembering the regions, to create 12 new states out of the existing four regions [54, 55]. The minority groups in the Niger Delta, who always wanted self-determination of some sort, jumped at this opportunity [41]. Rivers State was then carved out of the Eastern Region. It is within this Rivers State that the largest oil reserves are located. It was in the midst of this tension over who controls what, that Biafra declared independence leading to the war [45, 46, 51]. The federal government of Nigeria decided to deploy police action to force the secessionists back into Nigeria. The Biafra secessionists resisted this move, returning fire for fire.

Nonetheless, the Nigeria-Biafra war helped the victorious soldiers and state officials to arrive at certain conclusions. First, they became convinced that if the state is invoked, any measure taken to gain control and dominance over the oil resources in the Niger Delta can be justified. Secondly, with the crushing of the Biafran ‘rebellion’, another tribal mobilization against the state that will involve the use of arms was unlikely to occur. Third, measures were to be taken in the meantime, to consolidate the victory and foreclose the emergence from any part of the country of the kind of unified opposition seen from the Biafran rebels. Structural reforms—maintained up until today—coupled with new policies and legislations, were the results of this conclusion. These reforms are too complex to all find a place in this text, but one could read the influence of the oil complex thereof. The mineral and land use laws vest the ownership of all land as well as the control of all mineral resources and water courses in Nigeria’s land on the state and federal governments respectively. This is the oil complex manifesting in style.

Nonetheless, CSR in the Niger Delta is practically guided by the forces governing the global production network of oil. CSR must adapt its approaches to the operations of the oil complex and the petro-state which must maintain a monopoly over mineral exploitation within its territory, to add meaningful and concrete value to the operations of the oil complex. Recall that the economization of security coupled with US global oil acquisition strategy gave rise to a complex that strictly recommends a compulsory partnership between transnational oil companies and state-owned oil companies which must be placed under the control of the presidency and a colossal black box of malfeasance and corruption. Nothing must endanger this monopoly over oil and the attendant control by the presidency. To give local communities more participatory role in the process of deciding how CSR is approached could be read as a potential danger to this operation of the oil complex. Reflecting on the rationale behind the policies vesting all lands and minerals under state control, Ako says:

If ownership of land had remained vested in the local communities, they would have maintained some influence over oil exploration and production activities. Therefore, they would have been in a position to dictate the mode and size of operations within their territory as well as the socioeconomic and political benefits that must accrue to them. This would have enhanced their political and economic power substantially within a federation that relies extensively on oil revenues to sustain the national economy [56].

I would like to add that any expansion of local participation in the CSR approach might be an inadvertent admission of the injustice subsumed in the state policies vesting the monopoly of oil exploitation in Nigeria on the presidency. Such an expansion may not happen at all. The only reprieve for the local communities in this regard is the ‘peak oil’ predicted to hit the world from 2023 through 2035 [57], which would shift energy dependence away from oil to other sources of energy especially renewable energy. The implication is that oil complex will collapse to make way for other complexes which will affect local communities and CSR in ways different from what is known today.

7. Evaluation and conclusion

The bulk of the discussion here revolves around Corporate Social Responsibility detailing the corporate-community nexus of the oil extraction business in the Niger Delta. What has been highlighted is that transnational corporations have left indelible marks across the Niger Delta as the resource extraction business expands. The Niger Delta communities have to cope with the impact and changes the growing oil business has brought upon them. The dynamism of the local community significantly determines the advancement and profitability of the oil extraction business.

This paper has focused on the impact of Shell Petroleum Development Company on Obufia in Egbema through its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In a bid to keep the local community away from its business activities, Shell reaches out to the community with packages that may be considered as mouth watering by the company. The community struggles to turn the package into such a useful value to themselves. This struggle brings out their creative tendencies, making them modify their traditional alliances and practices using available materials they could piece together. Some of those available materials are oral traditions of migrations and affiliations. The success the local community records in this bricolage blurs the deficiency of the manner by which Shell reaches out to the community in the name of CSR. Nonetheless, it adds credence to the fact that some sort of window dressing inhibits CSR practice despite the theoretical gain in harmonizing the contradictory positions by means of the concept—enlightened value maximization.

More so, analysts often concentrate on conflicts, actors involved, their objectives and aims as well as their causes, which may include remote and proximate, latent and visible issues of assorted kinds. How conflicts have been prevented, especially in contexts reputed for violence is often regarded as the default situation and gets little or insufficient attention. The same approaches to CSR which feed into the violent conflicts in communities in Rivers and Delta States where Shell operates, have fed into no violent conflict in Obufia. This study encourages improved focus on conflict prevention measures and dispositions discernible from nodes of global networks where the record of conflict has been known to be very high.

Transnational corporations tend to take their neoliberal disposition that elevates the individual and their interests as a universal given. This myopic disposition points to either a ridiculous naivety or a deliberate scheme to sustain the imbalance between the global North and South in terms of accessibility to world’s resources. The naivety is to be read from the anthropological fact that humans act either to protect selfish interests or the interests of the groups they associate with, or for the interest of other people. From what we have seen about the global production network of oil, the complex has already determined the dispositions local communities must maintain in their relationship with the oil companies and the states. The lacuna in corporate governance codes regarding the relationship among individuals, corporate bodies and states, where beliefs and behaviors of key participants have been completely ignored [58, 59] can be insinuated as not being accidental. The world can keep searching for the permanent solution to incessant violent conflicts and wars without end for as long as the disposition to dominate remains alive. In subsequent studies, focus should be on how CSR can eliminate window dressing. The expansion of representation in the decision making processes of CSR can be explored.