A PERCEPTION STUDY OF THE NIGER-DELTA COMMUNITY ON AN ECOWAS ROLE IN THE NIGER DELTA SECURITY CRISIS

Abstract

Every constituted body is made with a general and a specific function in mind, and the relevance of any institution is always measured by its ability to fulfil its expected role. The creation of ECOWAS in 1975, the founding members gave it a central role of regional economic development through its members. However, seen that regional development became unattainable under flawed security architecture, ECOWAS inevitably adopted security as one of its key functions in West Africa. This study seeks to ascertain the opinions of the communities in the Niger-Delta region on, the contributory role ECOWAS must play in addressing the security crisis in the Niger Delta. The significance of this study is that if public perception agrees that ECOWAS has a role to play in addressing the conflict in the Niger-Delta, an ECOWAS intervention in the security crisis will be positively received. However, is public opinion disagrees with an ECOWAS role, then the grounds of an ECOWAS intervention are, thus automatically nullified. The non-experimental survey research design relying on quantitative data was instrumental in conducting this study. A total number of 482 respondents were used, questionnaires were instrumental for data collection and data analysis was done using parametric statistics (Analysis of Variance ANOVA). The result of the study concluded that public opinion in the Niger-Delta agrees with the statement that ECOWAS has a definite non-military role to play in addressing the Niger-Delta security crisis. The study also indicated that ECOWAS remains a viable and most appropriate institution for intervention in matters of security affecting the region of West Africa.