My LAND Is My Life: Unfreedoms in OIL Governance and Environmental and Social Justice in Nigeria’S Niger DELTA

The Niger Delta of Nigeria is an endangered ecosystem under exploitative extractivism with attendant injustice in environmental governance structure that removed agency from the historical landowners. Resistance against injustice has turned the areas to a theatre of criminal violence and intense activism for environmental and social justice, since the discovery and commercial extraction of crude oil started in the 1950s. Governments and multinational oil corporations have responded to the agitations of people in oil communities for justice with policies, special ministries, empowerment projects, derivative fund, clean-up of oil spills, amnesty and other projects. Unfortunately, endemic poverty and glaring inequalities exist in communities contributing 80% of government revenue and 95% of foreign exchange. In this paper, I extend existing conversations on the challenges of oil extraction and efforts at getting justice for the people of the Niger Delta by paying attention to various unfreedoms in the politics of oil in Nigeria and the inability of stakeholders to integrate the different dimensions of environmental and social justice as solutions to the intractable problems. I opine that giving agency/freedom to the people could trigger social and environmental justice and sustain government’s revenue derivation.