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Abstract: This paper examines how the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta, MEND become a force capable of truncating a national celebration such as the golden jubilee of Nigeria’s birth as an independent nation in October 2010. The paper suggest that there is a link between Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria and the deployment of different mobilization strategies for claiming oil resources by various militant groups in the Niger Delta. Today, Abuja, a capital city with its abundance of modern buildings, has become an important site for different actors aiming to reclaim land and resources for the Niger Delta people who live amidst resource-rich creeks but lacking in the form of “development” present in Abuja. Thus, creeks, which symbolize tradition and culture, have become an haven of violence and other forms of claim-making that invoke Abuja as a symbol of appropriated oil wealth. In my analysis, I suggest that the various claims and counter claims made by the Nigerian state, corporations, and Niger Delta communities are ingrained in a particular set of practices that decenters power, reconfigure governance and reshape the character of Nigerian elite politics.

Bio: Omolade Adunbi is a political anthropologist and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS). He received his B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria and an M.A. in African Studies with concentration in Politics and Political Economy from Yale University and PhD in Anthropology also from Yale University (2010). His areas of research explore issues related to resource distribution, governance, human and environmental rights, power, culture, transnational institutions, multinational corporations and the postcolonial state. His current work focuses particularly on Nigeria and is situated in the oil-rich communities of the Niger Delta region where he examines the connection between oil wealth and power on the one hand, and transnational capital and civil society organizations and their collaborations with NGOs and members of the local communities. His teaching interest include transnationalism, globalization, power, violence, human and environmental rights, the postcolonial state, social theory, resource distribution and contemporary African society, culture and politics.