Judicial Attitude To Environmental Litigation And Access To Environmental Justice In Nigeria: Lessons From Kiobel

Abstract

This paper examines judicial attitude to environmental litigation and access to
environmental justice in Nigeria. The paper employs expository analysis as its methodology in
discussing the theme. Essentially, the paper finds that environmental litigations in Nigeria are
bedeviled by legal technicalities such that victims of environmental pollution and degradation are
ultimately denied access to justice. Ranging from issue of locus to territorial and subject matter
jurisdiction, victims of oil spill and environmental degradation are often left without judicial
remedies. The paper finds that consequently, the people of the Niger Delta are increasingly losing
confidence in the judiciary both at the domestic and international level. This has heightened militancy
and youths’ restiveness in the area leading to loss of revenues and sometimes lives.
The paper notes with concern the recent trend of outsourcing justice, as evident in attempts
to bring environmental pollution cases in Nigeria before domestic courts abroad. For example the
celebrated case of Kiobel v Royal Dutch Shell, heard in United States of America. Kiobel is
arguably a setback to this approach of searching for environmental justice before international courts
and a reminder on the need to look inwards. This paper calls for judicial flexibility and a more
proactive approach to legal reasoning by Nigerian courts, in order to put environmental matters on
the front burner of our national discourse. Unless and until environmental justice is entrenched in
Nigeria through judicial activism, Governmental inertia and unwillingness to provide remedies for
victims of environmental degradation may continue to fuel militancy in the years ahead.