The capital, state and the production of differentiated social value in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper re-visits secondary literature on racial capitalism and problematises the Nigerian oil-dependent capitalist economy. The economy of oil extraction dispossesses the peasants of their land and exposes them to pollution. This Oil economy creates a contradiction by producing the agent of its transformation; the community-based social movements. The state and the capital respond to these contradictions by instrumentalizing differences to prevent communal solidarity. Consequently, the indigenous people are racialised as a minority people and within the oil-producing region as sub-ethnic communities. The absence of communal solidarity promotes unmitigated environmental disaster, state hegemony and high returns for the capital; local and global in Nigeria.