Placing the Rule of Law and Environmental Justice in the Resource-Conflict Nexus in Nigeria

Using Nigeria as a case study, this chapter analyses some of the protracted natural resource conflicts and their impact on the economy and environment in Africa. In many parts of the continent, the absence of the rule of law has exacerbated natural resource conflicts. This chapter relies on the environmental justice paradigm to critique the rule of law conundrum in natural resource governance in Africa. Arguably, the environmental justice paradigm can be deployed as a strategic tool to address natural resource conflicts in Africa. Hence, this chapter argues that there are inherent limitations of simply enforcing the rule of law in African countries since governments, who are the enforcers of laws, are usually directly or indirectly involved in natural resource conflicts. Thus, we argued that guaranteeing the enforcement of the rule of law would then depend on the integration of environmental justice principles into the laws and policies governing resource extraction and use in Africa. The chapter concludes by recommending some practical reform measures framed from the environmental justice paradigm that could be used to address the challenges associated with natural resource conflicts in Africa. Drawing lessons from Nigeria, this chapter can be useful to other African countries as well. To achieve this, a lesson-learned approach is important. This requires broad discussions of the key reforms necessary using Nigeria as an example.