Economic diversification and second‐tier political conflict: Assessing bitumen political ecologies in southwest Nigeria

Abstract

Since its emergence as a research field in the 1980s, political ecology has provided a useful tool to explicate violent environments, notably as hallmarks of natural resource‐dependent economies. Practitioners regularly address what might be called ‘charismatic’ natural resources such as oil and other precious minerals to describe contestation over access and control of natural resources. Yet, where this focus exists, the political ecology of less economically valuable or ‘noncharismatic’ resources is thereby obscured. Thus, Nigeria's dependency on oil production has generated much scholarly attention with its unstable political economy described as a rentier state. In contrast, this paper draws on extensive field experience and knowledge about the country to assess in a preliminary manner some of the dimensions and ramifications of a less well known second‐tier natural resource commodity that is gaining attention as part of a possible national economic diversification strategy. Using the case of bitumen, a viscous hydrocarbon mainly used in road surfacing and roofing work, I assess the trajectory of this relatively overlooked resource, thereby opening a window onto the political ecology of a noncharismatic resource. In contrast to the ubiquitous violence in the oil‐based Niger Delta, I suggest that bitumen political ecologies, while also provoking political conflict and debate, nonetheless seem to being marked by new power dynamics that might augur a less violence prone path in terms of Nigeria's political economy of natural resource production.