From Oloibiri To Renewal : An Agenda For An Environmental Recovery Compact For Nigeria’s 2027 Presidential Candidates

Niger Delta Environmental Justice Lawyers’ Forum

1. Introduction

For many years, I have been at the forefront of Nigeria’s environmental justice movement. I served as deputy lead defence counsel to Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigeria’s foremost environmental activist. In 1989, I founded the Environmental Rights Action (ERA), Nigeria’s first environmental justice advocacy group, and later supported the establishment of Friends of the Earth Nigeria. I have initiated several of Nigeria’s landmark environmental justice cases. I am counsel in Opara v Shell before the Supreme Court, where the central question is whether pollution claims can be enforced as fundamental rights. I am also engaged in the appeal in Shell v Gbemre. Leigh Day instructed me to give expert evidence on Nigerian constitutional law and the African Charter before the High Court of England and Wales, in the claims of the Bille and Ogale communities against Shell for oil spill damage in Rivers State. In all of this work, I have sought to establish that oil pollution is a matter of constitutional right, not merely a private grievance.

I now chair the Niger Delta Environmental Justice Lawyers’ Forum, which brings together leading environmental law practitioners in Nigeria. The Forum is non-partisan and endorses no party or candidate. Our concern is environmental justice in the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta sits at the heart of the national economy and has endured decades of environmental harm, yet it rarely features in presidential campaigns, and no candidate has placed it at the centre of theirs. The Forum has resolved to bring the Niger Delta into the national conversation, and this is our contribution to that effort. We are asking each candidate one question: what is your agenda for environmental recovery in the Niger Delta?

Oil was first struck at Oloibiri in 1956, and since then the Niger Delta has borne the environmental cost of Nigeria’s oil economy. The record is not in dispute. The Ogoni struggle, the work of theHydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), Amnesty International’s investigations and successive inquiries, reports and court decisions all reach the same findings. They document serious and cumulative pollution, weak prevention and enforcement, delayed or inadequate remediation, disputed spill investigations, harm to health and livelihoods, and a deep erosion of trust. Decades of reports have produced few lasting results. In the Forum’s view, the central failure is fragmentation. Cleanup, compensation, public health, security, divestment and the energy transition are handled as separate files, and no single institution is accountable for outcomes.

The human cost of that failure became clear again this month in Bille Kingdom, Rivers State, one of the communities whose claims are before the English courts. On 3 September 2026, Miss Joy Amos was fatally injured when gas exploded in her home. For more than a year, residents had lived with gas seeping through their soil, their water and their homes. They raised repeated warnings, and a Federal Government delegation visited in July 2026, but the promised intervention never came. Her death was not a domestic accident. It was the foreseeable result of the pattern the reports describe: the harm was identified and warnings were given, but responsibility was divided and action was deferred. The Forum has called for an independent inquiry, the sealing of the gas source, emergency relief for residents, and compensation for her family and others affected. Her death shows that the Niger Delta cannot wait for another report or another delegation. What the region needs now is a clear agenda for action, and the Forum sets out that agenda below.

2. The Grand Agenda

Joy Amos’s death, and the decades of neglect behind it, are why the Forum is putting this question to the candidates now. The next administration must not treat the Niger Delta as one more file to be managed. It must make the region’s recovery a national priority, with clear leadership, firm deadlines and a single institution answerable for results.

In answer to that question, the Forum’s position is that the findings and recommendations of the past decades must finally be implemented. These go back to the Willink Commission (1958) and include the African Commission’s decision in SERAC (2001), the Report of the Technical Committee on the Niger Delta (2008), UNEP’s Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland (2011) and the report of the Bayelsa State Oil and Environmental Commission (2023). We propose that a Niger Delta Environmental Restoration and Compensation Authority be established by statute to review and implement these reports, with the President setting clear timelines for action. That action should cover emergency protection for communities at risk, polluter-pays financing through a transparent fund, credible cleanup standards, spill prevention, access to justice, responsible divestment, livelihood renewal, and public accountability to the National Assembly and the people of the Niger Delta.

We invite every candidate to commit to establishing such an Authority. At a minimum, we ask each of them to state publicly where they stand on this agenda.