International Business Times quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on the recent violence in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region and what it means for Nigeria’s oil profits:
The two attacks echo a time when the region, which produces the vast reserves of crude oil that has fueled Nigeria’s economic rise, was in a state of perpetual conflict. Experts fear that tensions may increase this year.
“You have a potential crisis here,” Peter Pham, head of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, told International Business Times earlier this week.
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“One-time militants got the biggest payout and are now respectable citizens, many with multiple homes,” Pham said. “The program gave them a subsistence wage and something to occupy themselves.” He added that while the leaders are now well-off, and have started businesses for themselves, the average workers received nominal benefits.