REFLECTIONS ON RESOURCE CONFLICT AND POLITICO-LEGAL VIOLENCE IN NIGERIA'S JURISPRUDENCE

The struggle to control resources shows a particular kind of struggle, a historical but human conflict. It is an age long conflict of contro! of one man over the next man. It is a conflict over the ownership and control of resources. This conflict, over the centuries, has adopted several strategies ranging from systematic subjugation and decimation of the weak and powerless to outright armed conflict. It has also adopted slavery and colonialism aided by the force of arms. This conflict has also adopted structural marginalization, oppression, suppression, subtilty and deceit as its ready handmaids and instruments ancillary to its peculiar warfare. This conflict has also used legality (laws) as one of its instrument of war since by the social contract theory one is expected to obey laws made in his society on the pain of sanction for default: The purpose of this article is to do a critical survey of the unending war or conflict over resources in the Nigerian State and proffering solutions to this ugly situation in Nigeria’s politico-legal environment. Resource conflict is a conflict of interests where the God given owners of resources struggle to assert their ownership rights and control over their resources but another set of people who are always powerful, denies them this God given rights through the force of arms, unjust and confiscatory laws, slavery, colonialism, subjugation, suppression, _ structural marginalization, divide and rule tactics, double standards, the list is indeed endless as if to say, whatever comes, the oppressor can always adopt a Strategy to steal and cart away peoples resources.