The communities of the western Niger Delta, in the midst of economic turmoil, confronted the British colonial government’s effort to integrate them into the wider colonial economy with a boycott on palm oil exports in 1927. Taxation was the primary instrument of incorporation for the British government, and Niger Delta community’s primary form of leverage against taxation was a systemic boycott. Beyond taxation, these communities resented the imposition of warrant chiefs, who were tasked with enforcing taxation and carrying out local administration of the courts (another vital source of income for the colonial government). The 1927 boycott succeeded in slowing down the palm oil trade. It was also part of a broader pattern of resistance in the palm-producing region across southern Nigeria. This widespread resistance indicated the lack of knowledge and control the colonial state had regarding these communities, and the need to impose stronger mechanisms of contol, through the warrant chiefs, increased surveilance and policing, and by exploiting ethnic differences.

In order to understand the current intercommunal violence in the western Niger Delta we must examine the historical deprivation of representation and resources by the Nigerian state--in its colonial, nationalist, and post-independence forms. This introduction provides an overview of this historical process, laying out the key interventions of this book. First, Nigeria’s current political culture relies on the competition between majority and minority ethnic and religious groups. Second, minorities are constitutive of the national story, and their existence disrupts the standard nationalist narrative that centers a tripartite social structure based on the three numerically major ethnic identities. Third, considering the history of minority communities in Nigeria compels us to question the nature of citizenship and belonging in modern Nigeria.