From War Songs to Peace Songs: Owigiri, Militancy, and Peacebuilding in Nigeria’s Niger Delta Region[1] 

In the struggle for control of natural resources (oil and gas) in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, music has played an important but ambivalent role:[2] serving as a medium for resistance against decades of federal extraction of oil and neglect of the region, and later as a tool for fostering peace after the federal government granted Niger Delta ethnic minority militia groups presidential amnesty in 2009.

Crude oil and gas account for more than 84% of Nigeria’s federal revenue, with more than 90% of these resources concentrated in the country’s Niger Delta,[3] making the region the country’s “golden goose.” Yet despite the region serving as the country’s economic base, the ethnic groups who inhabit it are designated as “minorities” in Nigeria’s fraught political landscape dominated by ethnic majority elites. The relatively smaller ethnic minorities, whose Niger Delta region produces the petroleum resources that make up the bulk of the country’s wealth, have historically struggled with underdevelopment, marginalization, environmental pollution, and chronic poverty since the discovery of oil in the region in the late 1950s.[4]

Persistent demands for a fair share of oil and gas proceeds picked up after independence in 1960 and featured in the events leading up to the outbreak of the civil war in 1967, as well as in the agitation by Niger Delta ethnic minority groups in the early 1990s. They reached a turning point in 1998, when ethnic Ịjọ (also referred to as “Ịzọn”, and in the anglicised form as “Ijaw”) youths assembled in Kaiama, Bayelsa State, and resolved after adopting the Kaiama Declaration,[5] to protest petroleum production and revenues going to Abuja – Nigeria’s capital. This resulted in a repressive response from the Nigerian military,[6] marking the outbreak of armed struggle in the region between state security forces and armed ethnic minority militias.[7]

The Ịjọ are the predominant ethnic minority group in the Niger Delta, and most of the region’s oil and gas is located in their villages and creeks. From the late 1990s, Ịjọ ethnic militias attacked oil installations and pipelines both to express their grievances against the exploitation and pollution of their lands and waters by oil multinationals and the Nigerian state, and the exclusion of their people from the benefits accruing from the oil produced from their region. Such attacks and reprisals from the combined security forces (Joint Task Force or JTF) of the Nigerian state forced some oil companies, including Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and Nigerian Agip Exploration (NAE) and Agip Energy and Natural Resources (AENR), a local subsidiary of Eni, to suspend some of their operations and evacuate staff,[8] and led to a severe reduction in oil production output and exports, significantly cutting revenues flowing to the companies and federal government.[9] Some of the ethnic militias protesting the exploitation and marginalization of the Niger Delta included Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV), Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Movement for the Survival of the Izon Ethnic Nationality in the Niger Delta (MOSIEND), Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), etc,[10]while the military operations against them went by codenames such as Operation River Sweep, Operation Pulo Shield, Operation Fire for Fire, Operation Restore Hope, etc.[11]

By 2006, the struggle for resource control by the ethnic Ịjọ militias had led to unprecedented levels of disruption of petroleum production, forcing oil multinationals to declare force majeure, resulting in significant declines in output and exports. Despite the presence of the Nigerian military forces, the ethnic minority militias continued to wreak havoc on oil installations. This eventually led the government to enter into talks with the militia leaders to break the gridlock on production and exports. Based on the efforts of mediators, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua offered ethnic minority militias amnesty in 2009,[12] formally ending a chapter in the most violent phase in the ethnic minorities’ struggle for resource control in the Niger Delta. This essay explores one of the strategies through which the Ịjọ ethnic minority has resisted its marginalization, and the exploitation and pollution of its lands and waters by the oil industry, backed by the Nigerian federal government, by paying closer attention to the role and dynamics of a popular local music genre, owigiri.

Owigiri, the Ịjọ subgenre of highlife music,[13] is the dominant musical expression in the Ịjọ community, attracting an audience that spans all demographics – young and old, men and women, Christians and non-Christians, lettered and unlettered, and poor and rich. Owigiri songs address diverse everyday issues such as environmental pollution, marginalization, witchcraft, unity, pandemics, mortality, corruption, and peace. Owigiri artists perform at a wide range of events, including funerals, beach parties, marriage ceremonies, political meetings, coronations, festivals, birthdays, and elsewhere. Owigiri maintains strong visibility on digital platforms such as YouTube, X, Facebook, Audiomack, Boomplay, and Spotify. Beyond the Internet, its recordings are widely played in farms, bars, shops, homes, and on the road. Prominent bandleaders enjoy the patronage of former armed fighters, who provide them with musical instruments, while the artists, in return, compose songs to honour them. Owigiri appeals to the Ịjọ so much so that leading bandleaders, like soccer stars, have fan clubs in many villages and towns.[14] As a result, owigiri musicians enjoy a respected social position across Ijoland.

The famous Kaiama Declaration asserting Ijo right to self-determination in 1998 ushered in forceful and combative owigiri resistance songs. Characterizing themselves as “freedom singers” and referring to armed youth militias as “freedom fighters,” some owigiri bandleaders leveraged their respected social standing to produce songs that supported the activities of armed youth militias. Employing the cult of personality, bandleaders celebrated prominent Ịjọ armed fighters, provided encouragement, and called on other youths to join the struggle. Drawing on Ịjọ mythology, bandleaders reinforced fearlessness amongst combatants, assuring them that, because they were fighting a just cause, they would remain invincible, and their bodies impenetrable to bullets from the military since they were fighting for Ịjọ freedom under the protection of Egbesu,[15] the Ịjọ god of war and justice. The ethnic Ịjọ minority framed themselves as suffering under the oppression and marginalization by the Nigerian federal government, perceived as being under the control of ethnic majorities, while the armed fighters were framed as Ịjọ liberators or saviours.

These owigiri songs were not only played on the radio, but they were also either played or sung in militia camps. Some local artists were invited to give live performances in the militia camps in the forest. Former members of the Ịjọmilitias interviewed during this study spoke highly of the motivation provided by both the artists and the songs provided. An anonymous former camp commandant, speaking specifically of the songs of a foremost owigiri musician, Barrister S. Smooth, commented as follows:

The way his songs came over you, you became possessed. You became possessed, pushing you to do what you shouldn’t do. Even someone who had no intention of picking anything up would suddenly find themselves carrying it...Music makes your body impenetrable to bullets. Music is morale. Music makes your body bulletproof. His songs truly encouraged Ịjọ boys. If those songs were not there, the Ịjọ (struggle) wouldn’t have moved forward...Even in the battlefield, there was always singing. It was the songs that gave us morale.

Smooth himself, while reflecting on his conflict-oriented songs, told this researcher:

It was the pain of the suffering of the Ịjọ that made me sing... In the 1990s, when I was singing these songs, some people called me names, saying I was the one inciting Ịjọ youths to behave anyhow. It was said that my songs were encouraging Ịjọ youths to act anyhow in the creeks. Truly, my songs moved people deeply. If you had a heart and you were pained by the suffering of the Ịjọ, when you heard my songs, you didn’t know when you carried a machete, you didn’t know when you killed someone…there was no way you wouldn’t have opened a camp. You would open a camp and fight for the Ịjọ struggle.

However, demonstrating music’s dynamic nature, owigiri, which previously served as a platform for fuelling violence, became a tool for peacebuilding in 2009 following the federal government’s amnesty offer to the Niger Delta ethnic minority militias to lay down their arms and facilitate development in the region.

Framing the Ịjọ as victors in the struggle – since the Nigerian government had been forced to negotiate with the militias and respond to their demands – owigiri bandleaders appealed to armed fighters to surrender their arms and accept the presidential amnesty. Artists celebrated non-state armed actors as heroes and saviours who had delivered the Ịjọ from oppression, likening them to the Biblical Jesus Christ. When the first set of combatants accepted the amnesty, artists celebrated their action by composing new songs, praising them for embracing peace, while urging the remaining fighters – sometimes by name – to follow suit. Besides composing peace-oriented songs, some artists personally visited camps in the forest to persuade armed actors to lay down their arms. Reflecting on how owigiri facilitated peace, an ex-combatant who accepted the amnesty, but asked to remain anonymous, remarked that:

…when Roby (Robert Ebizimor) and others started saying “drop,” “drop,” we too said, “let’s drop…” Given that it was the government that had come to meet us to say we should drop our arms, after listening [to the songs], and actually, after consideration, we dropped our arms.

The Niger Delta experience of the capacity of music to drive violent conflict or peace parallels two well-known but contrasting cases in Africa. In northern Uganda, Acholi popular music played a key part in encouraging militiamen to accept a government amnesty, with Lindsay McClain Opiyo noting that the Acholi “widely credit music with playing a central role in ending more than two decades of armed conflict.”[16] By contrast, in Rwanda, the songs of the Hutu popular musician Simon Bikindi played a role in mobilizing and sustaining the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, for which he was later famously “tried as a war criminal at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).”[17] Taken together with these cases, the Niger Delta experience offers important insights for peacebuilding in Africa. It shows that the arts, particularly music, are not marginal to conflict. They can fuel violence or contribute to its resolution. Owigiri artists served as trusted mediators because of the credibility and influence they command in the Ịjọ community through years of musical dexterity. Conflict transformation approaches that neglect such cultural agents risk missing grassroots peace assets woven into communal life. African states and non-state peacebuilding bodies should, therefore, integrate the arts as fundamental components of the peacebuilding architecture across the continent.

Endnotes

  1. This think piece is based on the author’s research on the interaction between owigiri music and the oil-related conflicts in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. The study was funded by the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) African Peacebuilding and Developmental Dynamics (APDD) program, with funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY).  Fieldwork for the study was conducted between 2025-2026 in the Niger Delta. Respondents included former armed fighters, intellectuals, owigiri musicians, politicians and community leaders in the region. The author is grateful to both bodies for the support.

  2. Olivier Urbain, “Overcoming Challenges to Music’s Role in Peacebuilding,” Peace Review 31, no. 3 (2019): 332-340, https://doi.org/10.1080/10402659.2019.1735169.
  3. Cyril I. Obi, “Enter the Dragon? Chinese Oil Companies & Resistance in the Niger Delta,” Review of African Political Economy 35, no. 117 (2008): 417-434, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20406530.
  4. Eghosa E. Osaghae, “Resource Curse or Resource Blessing: The Case of the Niger Delta ‘Oil Republic’ in Nigeria,” Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 53, no. 2 (2015): 109-129. https://doi.org/10.1080/14662043.2015.1013297.
  5. http://www.unitedijaw.com/kaiama.htm#ogele
  6. Augustine Ikelegbe, “Encounters of Insurgent Youth Associations with the State in the Oil Rich Niger Delta Region of Nigeria,” Journal of Third World Studies 22, no. 1 (2005): 151-181. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45194225.
  7. Elias Courson, “MEND: Political Marginalization, Repression, and Petro-Insurgency in the Niger Delta,” African Security 4, no. 1 (2011): 20-43. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392206.2011.551060
  8. Craig Timberg, “Rebel Threat Disrupts Flow of Nigeria Oil,” The Washington Post, September 23, 2005.https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2005/09/24/rebel-threat-disrupts-flow-of-nigeria-oil/5682b858-eaf1-42c9-b7e2-3d53c11da559/
  9. Michael J. Watts and Ibaba Samuel Ibaba, “Turbulent Oil: Conflict and Insecurity in the Niger Delta,” African Security 4, no. 1 (2011): 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392206.2011.563181
  10. Edlyne Anugwom, “Something Mightier: Marginalization, Occult Imaginations and the Youth Conflict in the Oil-Rich Niger Delta,” Africa Spectrum 46, no. 3 (2011): 3-26. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23350193
  11. Opeoluwa Adisa Oluyemi, “The Military Dimension of Niger Delta Crisis and Its Implications on Nigeria’s National Security.” Sage Open 10 no. 2, (2020): 1-13 https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020922895
  12. Cyril Obi and Siri Aas Rustad, “Conclusion: Amnesty and Post-Amnesty Peace, is the Window of Opportunity Closing for the Niger Delta?” in Oil and Insurgency in the Niger Delta: Managing the Complex Politics of Petro-Violence, ed. by Cyril Obi and Siri Aas Rustad (Zed Books, 2011).
  13. A music genre that blends African and Western elements, which developed in English-speaking West African coastal cities during the early twentieth century.
  14. Imomotimi Armstrong, “Owigiri Music and the Expression of Ịjọ Identity,” Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa 21, nos. 1&2 (2024): 21-35.
  15. Kenneth Omeje, “The State, Conflict & Evolving Politics in the Niger Delta,” Review of African Political Economy 31, no. 101 (2004): 425-440. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4006965.
  16. Lindsay McClain Opiyo, “Engaging the ‘Other’: Contemporary Music as Perspective-Shifting in Post-Conflict Northern Uganda,” in Peacebuilding and the Arts, ed. by Jolyon Mitchell, Giselle Vincett, Theodora Hawksley, and Hal Culbertson (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17875-8_7.
  17. Jason McCoy, “Making Violence Ordinary: Radio, Music and the Rwandan Genocide,” Journal of International Library of African Music 8, no. 3 (2009): 85-86, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20788929.