Standing in a luxurious hotel room in the capital Abuja in a suit and tie, a militant leader from the oily swamps of the Niger Delta reveals his strategy to the FT.

“First you do war-war and then it’s a bit of jaw-jaw,” he says, standing over a draft contract for work on a state-owned gas pipeline that his own armed group had blown up in an act of “war-war” before negotiations, or “jaw-jaw” began.