This paper explores the impact of oil production by oil corporations on the Niger Delta region environment over time, with particular attention paid to the case of Ijaw oil-producing community. It focuses on the environmental impacts of oil production and associated pollution in the Ijaw area, and discusses the increasing internal contradictions involving the Ijaw youth and their elites in perpetuating environmental problems on their own land. It traces the controversy that surrounds the allegations from the local people whether oil was the only factor responsible for environmental pollution. By using scientific reports and statistical data, this paper further argues that the environmental problems facing the Niger Delta people were many, whilst oil and gas were mere contributory factors with attendant effect on water and land degradation. Using the Ijaw's case the paper have identified that lack of complaint with environmental laws and institutional structure for enforcing them in the Niger Delta oil-producing region have continued to undermine their desire for a clean environment, particularly toward a sustainable development of the Niger Delta and Nigeria at large. It concludes that there is urgent need for the Federal government to establish new oil and gas regulation that should have a statutory body for proper implementation of those laws. This would ensure peace and stability, a safe, clean and habitable environment for the inhabitant of the Niger Delta to benefit from the profit accruing to the oil corporations and the Nigerian government.

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This paper explores the nature of resource allocation in Nigeria with specific emphasis on the responses of Niger Delta Region to the politics of resource control as it affects oil fields in their territories. It investigates the factors responsible for persistent agitation for resource control by the local people, particularly the oil producing states, as well as the contradictions of resource control and the non oil-producing states in Nigeria. While the study notes that the region has enjoyed 50 percent allocation of revenue based on derivation, it also discovers that the military regime cancelled this which was adopted by successive government in Nigeria. The very important issue this paper addresses is why the abrogation of resource control took place in the first instance? The environmental despoliation of the region by the oil operators with little allocation that trickle down to the oil-producing area informed the massive protests and intense struggle for oil-resource control especially in the period 1990s and 2010. This paper further point out the fact that though the Niger Delta people's struggle was mainly environmental, in a wider perspective, it is political because of long neglect from economic benefits that come from oil production. The authors argues that the Delta wanted adequate electricity, good roads, pipeborne water, employment, good and functional health care centres, and access to quality education. It concludes that though the structure of the nation's political economy would never permit the federal government to relinquish or share the control of oil resources with the oilproducing states and communities, its failing promises to appropriate the revenue accrued from the region toward a sustainable development explain the basis for persistent demand and endless crisis in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

ABSRACT: Nigeria over the years had been beset by differing environmental problems caused mostly by human and natural factors. Such environmental problems had remained a source of crisis, especially in the Niger Delta. This paper explores the socio-economic dimension of environmental oil related crisis in Nigeria; Niger Delta oil-producing region. It partly discusses the environmental perspective of the crisis as it relates to oil and gas exploration in Nigeria. Set within the framework of the quest for a clean, safe and habitable environment, the study focuses on the experiences of Niger Delta region vis-a-vis oil pollution as major factor for socioeconomic and political struggle by the people. By using both primary and secondary source materials, the paper further argues that while there are other factors responsible for the severe environmental pollution characteristic of the Niger Delta region, the damage and neglect associated with oil and gas production by oil companies had remained dominant in the conflict, with attendant effect on water and land economic resources. With the realization that the main socio-economic and political struggle of the Niger Delta people had for decades centred on the constant environmental pollution, the study concludes that there is urgent need for policy reform by government that would enable the people and settlements of the Niger Delta region in Nigeria to benefit from revenue accruing to federal government and multinational oil corporations.

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