A change in the effect of natural resources today has continually raised serious arguments of its essence among key thinkers. In the past, extensive literatures from research works have tried to analyse the existing linkage between natural resources and violent conflict. Though conclusions from findings have barely been unequivocal, potent findings by key thinkers have linked the effect of natural resources on an economy's strive for growth and development to the outburst of civil wars. While one school of thought agrees that having a good command of natural resources and exploitation of these resources translates into a country's economic wealth (see Beitz 1979), refuting these assumptions is another school presenting empirical evidences to robustly illustrate that the possession of large natural resource bank in developing countries is more like a curse rather than a blessing to its possessor, admitting that though its discovery seemingly paves way for growth in the economy, it is usually short-lived and lacks sustainability which in the long run, makes the economies worse off than when they had started the journey to development, with poverty instigating grudges (Gelb and Associates (1988), Auty (1993), Sachs and Warner (1995, 1997, 2001), Gylfason (2001a, b), Papyrakis and Gerlagh (2004) . Oil-rich Nigeria and diamond-rich Sierra Leone have become guinea pigs confirming the lacking-in-the-midst-of-plenty [1] effect of natural resource endowment. (Zinn:2005)
Firstly, more salient in the past were issues pertaining to scarcity and how it impeded development and, research works conducted by economists like Stiglitz (1974), Homer-Dixon (1995) in attempts to scrutinize the impact of resource scarcity on growth as well as leave room for further policy reforms, seemingly revealed that a deficit in a country's natural resource adversely not only causes a stunted growth in a country's economy but also affects its population size (see also Dasputa and Heal : 1979; Barbier: 1996;). Homer-Dixon's (1994) research on the possible outcome of what was termed "environmental scarcities" not only showed that a deficiency in the "soon-to-be-exhausted" natural resources triggers large group migration to other areas which could lead to group-identification(Homer-Dixon: 1991) and probably ethnic-cleansing (as was the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina [2] ) etc., but could also distort social institutions in the state, cause economic deprivation and eventually conflict over struggle for ownership and control of scarce resources in the state. Renner et al (1991), Renner (1996) and Homer-Dixon (1999) also maintain that it is the intrinsic nature of human beings to fight for access to and control over natural resources and that when resources are scarce, people get frustrated about the feasibility of their survival. This frustration, they argued, instigates them to fight over these resources to guarantee their existence. See Figure 1.0 below.
Then, Ginsburg (1957:211), counting on its usefulness, scrutinised the role of natural resources in the economic growth of developing countries and concluded that the countries that are well-endowed with natural resources are more likely to attain economic growth. Seymour (1981) also connotes a rapport between the political system of a country and the extent of its economic development. Does this imply that the abundance of natural resource in itself is a prerequisite for economic growth? On the contrary, surveys on the failure of most developing economies no longer attribute poverty and growth retardation in these economies to their deficiency in natural resources as their findings confirm a rich reserve of natural resources ranging from land and water, to mineral oil in these countries. It is no news that the success of fast-growing recently developed economies Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, proudly referred to as the Asian Tigers, who do not boast of massive natural resource reserves can be attributed to reforms on manufacturing goods in their export industries, rather than imputed to the quantity or quality of natural resources they possess.
Beyond the common notion that the possession of natural resources in abundance confers a positive change on a country's economy and boosts its livelihood is the contradiction that many countries that fall in this category (possessors of the natural resources) have been crawling their way to economic growth, compared to their counterparts who are deficit in these natural resources. It is only commonsensical that "having plenty essentialities" is a blessing and advantageous while "lacking the essentialities" is more like a curse but recent findings prove this paradoxical. A new dimension of study piloted by Collier and Hoeffler: 1998, 2002a, 2002b, Fearon (2002) contradicting Ginsburg's findings, showed the propensity of natural resources in abundance to ignite violent conflicts within and around a state. If Ginsburg's(1957) findings are plausible, it then becomes puzzling why a country like Nigeria, Iran, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Venezuela, Angola, Rwanda Burma, but to mention a few, that have natural resources bestowed upon them rather reporting the least growth rates compared to their counterparts who are deficit in these resources? Why are there bothersome statistics of about two thirds of Nigerians in particular, living far below the World Bank-defined poverty line of $1.25 per day (see Ravallion et al: 2007), amidst its enormous oil-reserve vested in the Niger Delta region which has not only earned it revenues of way over $340 billion since the 1970s (Ravallion et al: 2009) but also accounts for about 96 per cent of its foreign earnings and a whole lot more than two thirds of its revenues? Having said that, why do the majority of these resource-wealthy countries have background records of violent conflicts and war out-breaks, some of which are still on-going? Has the possession of vast natural resources invoked upon them the resource curse? How best can we account for the relationship between the abundance of natural resources, occurrence of violent conflicts, and the resource curse?
******Remember to say how u intend to address the issue + others...******This study contributes to the extensive literatures on the curse of natural resources. We attempt to investigate the claims that natural resources are responsible for notable economic downturns and slow growth, tyranny/authoritarianism, unwise military building [3] , degrading environmental impacts, mismanagement of funds, amongst others, and as would be accessed critically by this study, violent conflict and civil wars.(see Ross:2004, Collier and Hoeffler: 1998 and Humphreys: 2005). Two main questions set the platform on which this survey will drive. Firstly, what are the evidences that the abundance of natural resources propagates violent conflict and if any, why? We address why some natural resources have conflict tendencies. Secondly, are conflicts in resource-rich economies caused independent of, or conjointly with other factors and if yes, what are these other factors? Sub-Saharan Africa is a case point for the study. We argue strongly that it is the weakness of basic institutions in resource-endowed countries that encourages all other factors contributing to a conflict-based resource curse. The fragility in these institutions makes the state permeable to the outbreak of greed and grievance tendencies.
Corruption is undeniably interlinked with conflicts. While it creates enabling grounds for conflicts to thrive since the state becomes engrossed in building capacities (usually with armed special-interest groups) to defend its illicit activities (Annan: 2004), conflict feeds corruption through bribing of institutions that are otherwise meant to counter these menaces. However inseparable these two issues may be, corruption is immeasurable and is sometimes not detailed and so this study will, except where inevitable, pay less attention to the debates on the role of natural resources in fostering corruption within countries and focus more on its linkage with the violent outbreaks so as not to lose focus on the intended survey.
Natural resources are nature's gifts to mankind and are so called because they were not created by the art of human beings and are obtained from the environment. Because not all of them have the propensity to cause havoc, I differentiate them based on their types, origins, uses, characteristics etc. Though natural resources [4] can be roughly divided in two groups: renewable resources (RNR) like fresh water, forests, fertile soils, and the earth's ozone layer and non-renewable resources like oil and iron ore (NNR), for the purpose of clarity, this study adapts to Ross' in Bannon and Collier (2003) specifications of natural resources which, according to him, have the potentials to set-off violent conflicts and like Fearon (2002) adds, sustain it. I focus more on natural resources like oil and hard-rock minerals, and then make references to timber, coltan, diamonds, gold and other gemstones as many literatures encompass their notoriety.
NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE RESOURCE CURSE: AN OVERVIEW
Pertinent to literatures on the resource curse which is mostly associated with developing countries like Nigeria, Angola, Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone but to mention a few, is the existence of a bounty of natural resources in these countries. Several scholarly works in the past decades have brought to the limelight the multifaceted end product of natural resources endowment in countries. Natural resources constitute the wealth of every nation and as assumed, are one of the drivers of economic growth, prospective wealth and opportunities within its source countries (Humphreys et al.: 2007). Sachs and Warner identify them as catalysts for boosting a nation's wealth and purchasing power over imports, increase its economy investment and consequently enhance growth. Botswana and Norway confirm evidences of how it became the bedrock of economic growth and positively impacted on their country.
CLASSIFICATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES
Viewed as "gifts of nature" (Basedau: 2005) or the "golden touch gift" (Papyrakis: 2006), and diverse in terms of characteristics, accessibility, purpose, duration of distribution, value etc, natural resources were regarded as beneficial materials to the economy of any country. Alongside other propellers of a nation's wealth and development such as its social capital, physical capital and human capital (Lay and Mahmoud: 2004), they all act interdependently to achieve a robust economic growth. Auty (2001) recollects that "during the closing decades of the 20th century, natural capital interacted with socio-political factors to play a central role in conditioning the efficiency with which both produced and human capital are deployed, and also in guiding the long-term development trajectory". Natural resource wealth initiated economic development in now developed countries like the United States, Norway, Canada and even developing countries like Botswana have been able to utilise their resource endowments wisely, reflecting a good command of their resource wealth management. Germany and United Kingdom, with their rich reserves of resources like coal and ore, industrialisation was a sure outcome of their resource wealth, while the lack of natural resources created a comparative advantage for East Asian economies to alternatively outsource fall back on foreign trade [5] (Matsuyama: 1992). In contrast, others like Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Liberia are yet to exhibit a stable economy, long-term sustainable development, good governance and where the standards of living have seemingly been augmented, they are short-lived, leading to abject poverty than before. This study requires the classification of these natural resources so as not to generalize our findings and to understand the potency of their characteristic as regards the discourse.
The traditional classification of natural resources are as physical resources in form of renewable resources -forests, water, agricultural land, fish- and non-renewable resources -gemstones, minerals like iron ore, oil, gas. Some renewable resources are classified as flow resources as they can be replenished without regeneration within a fair period of time once they are depleted example agricultural crops, sunlight, water, etc. Non-renewable resources on the other hand take so long a time in formation and cannot be replenished once they have been exhausted. Another group arranges resources into lootable and non-lootable resources (Lujala et al: 2005); for them, natural resources such as gemstones i.e. alluvial diamonds, drugs and agricultural products are easily extracted and require little or no technology or capital investment in equipment or otherwise in the process of their extraction. Others like gas, oil etc are more capital intensive in terms of their extraction. Snyder and Bhavnani (2005) add that a small-scale group of artisans can just profitably exploit lootable resources which have low economic barriers to entry as against the non-lootable resources like bauxite, petroleum, Kimberlite diamonds, etc which require advanced know-how to profitably exploit them since they have high economic barriers to entry [6] . Ross' (2002, 2003) empirical analyses explain the need for differentiation of natural resources in the sense that their impact is predetermined by the chances that these resources can either be looted or not. He points out that the extraction of lootable resources like diamond and drugs require unskilled workers while non-lootable resources like natural gas, deep-shaft minerals etc. rely on the use of (highly) skilled labour and capital. A different approach categorizes natural resources in terms of their accessibility, ease of use, concentration, etc. For example, Le Billion (2001) distinguishes between proximate and distant resources in terms of their accessibility which, to study their capability, he correlates with Auty's (2001) distinction between natural resources based on where they originate from and the dispersal of their rents; Point resources which involves the exploitation of capital intensive resources confined in an area basically by the extractive industry e.g. mining and diffuse resources which are majorly extracted by productive industry and are dispersed, rather than concentrated in an area.
Put a chart to show the relationship here...
In all these classifications, research structured towards the effect of natural resources revealed an interconnection between the type of resources, accessibility, motive etc. and its eventual negative outcome. Alao (2007) remarks that it is not the natural resources per se that is problematic but that it is the politics governing the entire process from its extraction until the final disbursement of revenues generated from these resources that ascertain its outcome as a curse or blessing to its possessors. Earlier analysis by Homer-Dixon (1999) explains the connection between environment and conflict; a downward change in the quantity and quality of renewable natural resources due to factor like environmental change, increase in population, uneven distribution of these resources, resource depletion and degradation create enabling environments for violent conflict. Alao: (2007) acknowledging the pressure of the environment, cited Kaplan warnings that these environmental stress, among other pressures, would cause chaotic clashes by "armed bands of stateless, marauders with private security forces of the elites". (Kaplan: Quoted in Alao: 2007). Schwartz et al (2000) put forward analyses of scarcity of renewable (natural) resources as underlying channels of conflict while De Soysa (2002) asserts that resource-poor environments are more prone to conflict than resource-rich countries as it is more of scarcity of resources that fuels conflicts.
The trend of debate takes a shift as Ross (2001) finds a relative link between natural resources -oil and other minerals- and the political regime of its possessor. He argues that these resources frustrate democratic practice in supposedly democratic regimes. Yates' (1996) notion that revenues gotten from natural resources cause political elite to become less accountable to the people thus breeding authoritarian leaders supports the arguments. Gylfason (2001) argues that natural resource rents have a "dutch disease" effect on human resources, making all policy input redirected towards the natural resource sector, abandoning developing human capabilities (e.g. education, health sector, etc.) since the sector requires more of the low-skilled workers than the highly-skilled workers. Collier and Hoeffler (1998) using the share of natural resource exports in terms of GDP to evaluate a country's natural resource wealth, underpins Homer-Dixon's resource scarcity- violent conflict literature and proposes a correlation between a bountiful of natural resources and the outbreak of war. Still in his findings, De Soysa (2002) adds that low economic development rates in resource-rich countries not only increases poverty but also the likelihood of conflict. Lujala (2005) finds that armed conflicts occur more in countries that have an ample bank of natural resources compared to their resource-poor countries. Emphasising the significance of the state structure, Hodler asserts that oil windfalls instil rent-seeking and fighting tendencies mostly in fractionalized states while Svensson (2000) agrees that corruption grows in fractionalised countries receiving foreign aid. Leite and Weidmann (1999) and Sachs and Warner (1995) suggest that the exploration of natural resources is a very high rent process which necessitates rent-seeking, which is most conversant in developing countries. Scholars like Fearon (2004) and Humphreys (2005) attribute the duration of violent conflicts to the type of resources. For example, the former claims that gemstones, which are highly lootable, lengthen the duration of wars while the latter opines that diamonds curtail the duration of wars. Fearon (2004) also identified that revenues gotten from natural resources like precious gems, as well as from contraband products like opium, cocaine, etc which are obtainable from these resources are means through which rebel groups sustain violent conflicts. Collier et al (2005) summarize that aside other channels, rebels are funded through stipends acquired from the extortion of natural resources.
THE CAUSAL EFFECTS OF THE RESOURCE CURSE
Very important theoretical literatures have emerged to rethink natural resources as a major cause of reverse development in developing countries. Dating back to history, "the resource curse" first coined by Auty (1993) or "King Midas (Papyrakis: ) or "paradox of plenty" (Karl: 1997) and supported by other economists (see Papyrakis and Gerlagh: 2004, Gylfason, Herbertsson and Zoega: 1999, Sachs and Warner (1995), emerged following the recognition that resource-rich countries do not profit from their endowment but also fare worse off than resource-poor countries, a phenomenon that defies logic and has since been a subject of debate on development in developing nations. This paradoxical connotation takes to the belief that countries that are richly endowed with natural resources represent the major losers in the whole development process. Natural resources have been blamed not only for perpetuating corruption, breeding tyrant leaders, but also for the war-like deeds that exist in their host nations; rather than being advantageous, they become stimulants of ills in the society. Different implications of natural resources draw-up from analyses by various schools of thought on the situations in well-endowed countries. For economists, natural resources correlate negatively with economic growth. First, Auty's (1993) findings from exporting countries of hard mineral like bauxite, copper and tin (though not from developing countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa) complements Krugman's 1987) and Gelb's (1988) analysis on the outweighing spoils of natural resource booms over the economic advantages in mineral economies [7] .
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Available explanations for the resource curse points towards its transmission channels. I discuss two main syndromes that have been overtly held responsible for the resource curse: - the Dutch Disease Syndrome and the Rentier State Syndrome.
DUTCH DISEASE
The "Dutch disease" [8] syndrome translates to the adverse effect of an export windfall on tradable sectors in an economy. Matsuyama (1992) adapts to the Ricardo-Viner Jones' model to explain the importance of a sector (agriculture) in industrial revolution; two major sectors form the framework of any economy -manufacturing and agriculture [9] - and they employ labour to grow and is basically more of learning-by-doing. Normally, in a closed economy, an external increment in agricultural productivity allocates more labour to the manufacturing sector which means rapid economic growth. But there is a negative reaction in an open economy so when there low productivity in the agriculture sector, more labour shifts to manufacturing causing it to grow however, the agricultural sector crowds out the manufacturing sector which then relies on cheap labour to survive, causing the economy to de-industrialise in the stead, and eventually decline in the long run.
However, an upsurge in the value of a country's natural resources products forces labour and capital away from other sectors in the economy, pulling it to the natural resource sector -the resource pull effect- with prospects of more and more future resource price increment, influx of foreign currency and favourable real exchange rates and foreign direct investment (FDI). The increment in foreign exchange rates leads to a decline in the traded sector (Sachs and Warner: 1997, 2001) and makes domestic commodities less competitive for export -the spending effect- (Ebrahim-Zadeh: 2003). The manufacturing sector shrinks and non-natural resource products become non-tradable. Labour force is also negatively affected by the shift in exports from manufacturing (and agriculture) sector. (see Ross:2007) Consequently, the FDI, a fundamental measure of an economies development, shrinks as well. Due to the volatility in the prices of these natural resource products, when market forces come into play and their prices fall, productivity in the natural resource sector is forestalled and the other sectors face difficulties in rebounding. (Humphreys et al: 2007). The eventual impact is poverty margins as a once-blossoming economy plummets worse-off than its initial take-off status (Auty: 1995), though there are reflections on how the factors of production react positively with the natural resource sector, making a resource boom to lead to growth expansion (see Findlay and Lundahl: 1994). As Collier and Hoeffler (1998, 2001) note, when states become highly dependent on the export of primary commodities, they become porous to war-like behaviours. When hit by the Dutch disease, commodity price shocks in these states cause disproportion in budget and misappropriation of resource revenues (Bannon and Collier: 2003) which upsets a sector of people who, feeling they are better-off managing their natural resources away from the state's governance, express their grievances by attempting to secede usually by coercion (Collier and Hoeffler: 2005). A typical was the Kasai secession War of 1960-1962 in DRC for, other reasons inclusive, the control of its gem quality and industrial diamonds. [10]
THE RENTIER STATE
More prominent in sub-Saharan Africa, has been conflicts over some particular natural resources like diamond as was the case in Angola and Liberia; gold, coltan and copper in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); and conspicuously in Nigeria, being the focal point of this study and Algeria, oil; which among other reasons, is caused by what Collier explains, the greed and grievance tendencies of human beings elicited by these resources. This essay builds up from Collier's theory of greed and grievances. It is more concerned with non-lootables (see Ross: 2002,) and considers the main subset of natural resources prominent with Nigeria, mineral oil, studying the interaction between these categories of resources and conflict. The resource curse actually encompasses the effect of various kinds of natural resources but invariably recorded in the cases of natural resources-provoked conflicts in endowed developing nations is what OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso referred to as "the devil's excrement"- oil.
