State-Corporate environmental crime and human security in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

Abstract

Admittedly, environmental crime or green criminology as sub-filed or a separate section of legal jurisprudence is struggling to evolve in Nigeria. This is particularly so in the light of lax legislation regulating the Nigeria oil industry. This paper advanced the argument that all human acts such as oil spills, gas flaring and other forms of environmental degradation in contravention of existing environmental legislation amount to environmental violence; and constitute environmental crime; which crime is increasing unabated in the Nigeria Delta region of Nigeria, with huge human security implications. The environment isthe life and sustainer of humanity, unfortunately man has become a destroyer instead of a protector and replenisher of the environment on account of the unsustainable drive for capital accumulation for industrialization and development. The outcomes of the activities associated with industrialization and development instead of ameliorating has rather deepened the poverty and misery of the Niger Delta. The acts of ecocide and genocide committed by the Multinational Oil Corporations with the tacit connivance Nigerian state had continuously threatened human security, without commensurable commitments to halting the impending Armageddon. The argument of this paper is guided by resource curse theory. Data were purely qualitative, and generated from secondary sources and subjected to content analysis. The fundamental finding of this paper is that the trouble with environmental governance in Nigeria is not the want of regulations, albeit weak but the weak extractive and regulatory capacity of the Nigeria state to enforce compliance. The paper recommends very strongly that the Nigerian state must assert its stateness, effectively perform its regulatory roles, and criminalize all acts of environment violations.