Environmental Injustices and Conflicts in Nigeria's Niger Delta: Evidence from Ogoniland

Abstract

Ogoniland would come to experience a massive scale of environmental degradation beginning from when crude oil was first drilled on one of the many oil wells in the region in 1958 by the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC). Between 1958 and 2016 – when the Oil clean-up exercise was proposed barely one year after President MuhammaduBuhari came to power in 2015, findings revealed that the Ogoni clean-up exercise has continued to remain a lingering issue with a bleak reality ahead. Although, at the initial stage, the idea to conduct a systematic environmental  clean-up of Ogoniland was lauded as a right step in the right direction – as it promises to address one of the root causes of conflict in the area, and the entire Niger Delta region – a critical assessment of the Ogoni clean-up revealed that the President MuhammaduBuhari-led administration is yet to fulfill its promise on the clean-up exercise, as very little or nothing have been done to address the issue of environmental injustices that has remained one of the pivotal concerns of the people since 1970 when the first major oil spill happened in Ogoniland.