NATURAL RESOURCE EXPLOITATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE IN NIGERIA: A LEGAL ANALYSIS OF REGULATORY ENFORCEMENT, JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND ENERGY TRANSITION CHALLENGES

This article provides a legal analysis of the environmental implications of natural resource exploitation in Nigeria, with particular attention to petroleum, solid minerals and extractive governance in the context of the energy transition. Using doctrinal legal methodology and comparative insights from Norway, Canada, South Africa and Ghana, the article examines Nigeria’s constitutional, statutory and institutional frameworks, including the Petroleum Industry Act 2021, environmental impact assessment requirements, gas flaring controls and decarbonisation objectives. It argues that Nigeria’s persistent environmental degradation is attributable less to the absence of legal norms than to weak enforcement, fragmented regulatory mandates, inadequate institutional capacity and the limited justiciability of constitutional environmental obligations. The article further demonstrates that judicial interventions have advanced environmental accountability but remain insufficient without coherent regulatory reform. Its originality lies in integrating extractive-sector regulation, environmental enforcement, judicial accountability and energy-transition governance into a single analytical framework for evaluating Nigeria’s resource-governance challenges. It concludes that effective resource governance in Nigeria requires enforceable environmental standards, integrated institutional oversight, strengthened community participation and alignment of extractive regulation with climate mitigation and sustainable development commitments.