Abstract

Nigeria’s Niger Delta is currently trapped in a web of environmental pollution and livelihood crisis enabled by decades of crude oil exploration and exploitation by both the international and local oil companies. Limited interventions have been made by business concerns that are directly responsible for the environmental degradation, as well as governments at all levels in restoring and creating alternative sources of livelihoods for the people in the impacted communities. This paper submits that there is a connivance between the Nigerian state and the operators of the country’s petroleum industry to exploit resources in the region, and the people therein, without serious considerations for their lost sources of livelihood, despite pushing the majority of them into multidimensional poverty. Therefore, the paper examines the extent of the livelihood crisis in the Niger Delta caused by oil and gas operations and climate change; investigates the emerging livelihood options in the region; and suggests ways of revamping the ailing local economy. This study employed the sustainable livelihoods theory in explaining the variables herein. Data were derived from secondary sources such as academic journals, publications by non-governmental organisations, government gazettes, and others. The findings reveal that oil and gas activities have constantly truncated the aquatic and mangrove ecosystem in the region, and that citizens’ traditional sources of livelihoods are either on the verge of extinction or already extinct, leading to imminent humanitarian and security crises. To address the existing livelihoods crisis in the region, the study recommends the revival of green, blue, and digital economies to provide alternative sources of livelihoods for the people; the replication of the Ogoni clean-up prototype in other impacted communities in the Niger Delta, and the effective implementation of the Host Communities Development Trusts enshrined in the Petroleum Industry Act, amongst others.

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