Abstract
Bonny Island sits on the eastern edge of the Niger Delta. For more than three centuries it has been a hub of Atlantic and global trade. It was a leading port for the export of enslaved people in the eighteenth century, and a major palm oil trading post in the nineteenth. Since the mid-twentieth century it has been the chief outlet for Nigerian crude oil, and since 1999, for Nigerian liquefied natural gas. This article traces the modern history of conflict between Bonny’s oil-producing communities and the multinational companies and Nigerian state that built this infrastructure, from 1970 to 2015. It argues that the island’s central place in global energy supply gives this local history a direct bearing on international energy security. The article draws on oral testimony gathered in five Bonny communities, together with company records, human rights investigations, and press accounts from the period. It places Bonny’s experience within a wider wave of confrontation that swept the Niger Delta from the late 1980s onward. Similar crises unfolded at Iko, Umuechem, Egi, Ogoniland, Kaiama, and Odi. The article then traces how local grievance escalated into direct action at Bonny itself. The most consequential episode was the 2001 occupation of Mobil’s Bonny River Terminal. The article concludes that companies, the state, and communities have developed responses to this conflict over four decades. These include international frameworks such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. Yet these responses have addressed the conflict’s symptoms more consistently than its underlying cause. That cause is the absence of development to match the wealth extracted from the ground.
Keywords: Niger Delta, Bonny, Nigeria, Oil history, Energy Security, Environmental history, Petro-violence.
Author name(s):
Anthony Williams Amamkpa
Department of History and
International Studies
University of Uyo, Uyo.
+234-8066338260, +234-8023160583
DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23089344
Copyright © [2026] The Author(s). Published by the Journal of People and Worldviews (JPW). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are properly credited.