Extractive practices, oil corporations and contested spaces in Nigeria

In 2003, Nigeria voluntarily joined the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), implementing a Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI). This paper maps the various contestations-contestations over ownership of oil, state control of the verse oil resources and the lack of benefits by communities where the oil is located-around oil exploration in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, suggesting that the establishment and enactment of the NEITI is a clear response to many of the contestations that have bedeviled the oil industry for decades. In mapping these contestations, I situate NEITI within a global system of extractive practices that have over several decades entangled extractive enclaves with corporations and the state. The paper suggests that while EITI/NEITI focuses on transparency and accountability in the revenue stream of the state in the extractive industries, it neglects how extractive practices impact the daily, lived experiences of the people who live in extractive enclaves. My argument is that the idea of transparency being promoted by NEITI is emblematic of a particular neoliberal frame that centers at its core a particular form of extractive practices whose goal is maximization of profit. This neoliberal frame is not particular to Nigeria, but rather shaped by a global order that connects local actors with transnational networks, promoting an alliance that reconfigures power and forms of knowledge production that privilege the state and its business partners, the oil corporations