Resumen de Petroleum Host Communities and their rights to the environment in Nigeria: Shifting between economic interest and the right to clean environment

Brown Umukoro

• One major stakeholder in the petroleum industry which is hardly accorded recognition in Nigeria is the host community. Petroleum host communities occupy a critical place in ensuring unhindered production of oil and gas as oil pipelines and other installations run through their farms, lands and streams. However, the Federal Government of Nigeria and oil producing companies have consistently explored and exploited these communities without a corresponding infrastructural development in these areas. This has occasioned large scale and systematic unrest in host communities leading to huge economic losses to the federal government and degradation of the environment. Though, the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 and the Nigeria Upstream Petroleum Host Communities Development Regulations 2022 attempt to give host communities some recognition, this recent development focuses more on the social and economic advantage of being an oil producing area. Thearticle, therefore, seeks to interrogate the reasons for prioritising economic interests over host communities' rights to clean environment. In doing this, the study examines the concept of host community under the Petroleum Industry Act 2021 and constitutional challenges relating to the enforcement of environmental rights in Nigeria,including the right of host communities to participate in environmental decisions.