Abstract The relationship between political settlements and organised violence and crime in the contemporary developing world is little understood. Analysing the oil wars and massive oil theft in the Niger delta of Nigeria in the first decade after the transition to civilian‐electoral rule in 1999, this article shows that (i) organised violence is not exogenous to political settlements and their (re)production and does not always destabilise them; and (ii) organised criminal activities associated with the generation of natural resource rents, such as the massive theft of crude oil, can contribute to violence mitigation and the stabilisation of a contested political settlement. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.