Nigeria has an urgent insecurity problem . News from the country often emphasises insecurity related to Islamic insurgents in Northern Nigeria, organised armed banditry involving Fulani herdsmen , farmer-herder conflicts, kidnapping and armed robbery . Insecurity has long been a problem in the country’s oil rich Niger Delta region too. From the early 2000s , armed militants targeted oil industry infrastructure and kidnapped expatriates. This continued until the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua introduced an amnesty programme for militants in 2009. Hostilities decreased but the programme focused mainly on securing the oil industry. It did not address the overarching insecurity affecting ordinary people. Thirty-one million Nigerians live in the Niger Delta area. Most have their roots in local ethnic communities. People in the region are engaged in both formal and informal employment. For many years their lives have been shaped by the political economy of the oil industry. And […]