Oil Production and the Poverty Situation in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria: A Case of Selected Communities

Abstract

When the oil producing communities relinquished their land for oil production, they did so expecting direct benefits, which may be summarized as welfare improvement. But unfortunately, rather than celebrate the arrival of these benefits, there were complaints from the communities about damage to the environment, which impacted their means of livelihood negatively. It is therefore to investigate these claims that this study examines the effects of oil production on household income generation and well-being in selected oil producing communities in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. To accomplish this task, survey approach was employed on account of which the three (3) participating States; four (4) Local Government Areas; and five (5) communities were selected with the aid of purposive sampling technique. Also, the six hundred and fifty-eight (658) households, which constituted the sampled objects of study were drawn with the employment of random sampling technique. The generated data was therefore analyzed with the aid of descriptive and logistic regression tools. The result of the analysis revealed that oil exploration and exploitation activities, truly impacted negatively on the income capacity and the well-being of households in the oil-bearing communities. Hence, something significant needs to be done in order to reverse the trend. The study recommends that policies that would ensure immediate clean-up of pollution sites, and adequate compensation plan both in the case of pollution and land take-over be put in place. These would ensure socially-optimal operations by the firms that would guarantee the protection of community dwellers who have always been at the receiving end of the negative effect of oil production.