Razed, repressed and bought off: The demobilization of the Ogoni protest campaign in the Niger Delta

• The 1993–1995 mobilization in Ogoni, Rivers State, Nigeria remains the largest peaceful protest campaign ever held against the political, economic and environmental impacts of oil production.
• This study examines the demobilization of the Ogoni protest campaign by focusing on the processes and mechanisms that shaped the campaign’s trajectory.
• In contrast to the contentious politics literature, we identify an alternative causal mechanism to explain the demobilization process.
• We conclude by assessing how relations between extractive industry firms and their local host communities have or have not changed in the twenty years since the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995.

This study examines the demobilization of the Ogoni protest campaign in the oil producing Niger Delta region of Nigeria in the mid-1990s. The contentious politics literature suggests that protest campaigns demobilize as a consequence of the polarization between radical and moderate protesters. In this study, we offer a different causal mechanism and argue that protest campaigns can demobilize before such polarization occurs if states respond to the expansion of a protest campaign with brutal and indiscriminate repression. Moreover, states can prevent the subsequent radicalization of a protest campaign followed by harsh repression by coopting the radicals and the remaining moderate elites while continuing to use repression to prevent collective action. Our conclusion assesses how relations between extractive industry firms and their local host communities have or have not changed in the twenty years since the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995.