The crisis in Nigeria’s Niger Delta rages on. This is despite the fact that different dialogue events have, over the years, been staged to resolve the crisis. The resilience of the crisis and the apparent failure, so far, to solve the crisis by means of dialogue necessitates the need to, as in this paper, examine why dialogue has remained ineffective in the effort to resolve the crisis. The examination is conducted qualitatively. Samples of discourse about the Niger Delta crisis were subjected to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Analysis found that the social mentality in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria is contaminated with narcissism to a degree where interest-bartering stifles the potentials of dialogue to resolve crisis. Conclusion recommends that if the elites of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria are sincere about using dialogue to resolve the crisis, they must free dialogues about the crisis from ideological manipulation.
Keywords: Dialogue, Narcissistic Mentality, Niger Delta Crisis
