2007, Aderoju Oyefusi / The World Bank
The Post-Conflict Transitions Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about post-conflict development (more information about the Post- Conflict Transitions Project can be found at http://econ.worldbank.org/programs/conflict). An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in these papers are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank, its Executive Directors, or the countries they represent.
This paper originated from a PhD dissertation carried out by the author in the Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Benin, Nigeria. The author is grateful to Paul Collier; Anke Hoeffler; Indra De Soysa; M. Reynal-Querol and Akin Iwayemi for extensive comments, to participants at the CSAE 2006 Conference, University of Oxford and the PIDDCP research project workshop, Oslo, June 19-20, 2006 for comments on earlier drafts, and to the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), Nairobi, for financial support.
This paper attempts to explain the determinants of the propensity to armed struggle and the probability of participation by individuals in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria using primary (micro) data. While grievance appears to be pervasive among individuals and communities in the region and can be systematically explained, neither the grievance level nor its commonly-cited causal factors appear to be strong enough to create a disposition towards armed rebellion. Rather, factors that reduce the opportunity cost and risk of participation or increase the perceived benefits appear to be more important. The study identifies three of these factors that are amenable to policy makers’ control as income level, educational attainment, and government presence.
This paper attempts to explain the determinants of the propensity to armed struggle and the probability of participation by individuals in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria using primary data from a sample of 1,337 individuals drawn from 18 communities in the region. Nineteen variables are used to capture factors that reflect motives and opportunity for rebellion and a logit regression model is used to estimate the propensity to armed struggle in the population. About 36 percent of the sampled population revealed a willingness to take up arms, which translates to a potential rebel army size of about 24 percent of the male population in the states covered. While grievance appears pervasive and is systematically explained by the data, neither the grievance level nor its commonly-cited causal factors, appear to be strong enough to create a disposition towards armed rebellion. Rather, factors that reduce the opportunity cost and risk of participation or increase the perceived benefits appear to be more important. Three community level and five individual-level characteristics are particularly found to increase conflict risk in the region. Oil-availability, longer distance from state capital and absence of government presence makes a community a haven for would-be rebels. The propensity to armed struggle also increases in lower income level, lower educational attainment, lack of asset or asset-immobility, if an individual is unconstrained by a marital bond, or is from the dominant ethnic group. Three of these statistically significant variables are amenable to policy-makers’ control.
