Environmental Rights in Nigeria: Promise Without Protection?
By Manasseh Akpa, Esq.
Environmental degradation is no longer a distant policy issue in Nigeria, it is a reality that many communities live with every day. Across the country, people contend with flooding, desertification, pollution, deforestation, and poor waste management.
These environmental challenges do more than damage ecosystems; they threaten public health, livelihoods, food security, and, in many cases, lives. Yet, despite these realities, one important question rarely receives the attention it deserves: Does every Nigerian have a legally enforceable right to a clean and healthy environment? Governments, Courts, and International human rights institutions recognise that a safe, clean, and sustainable environment is fundamental to the enjoyment of basic human rights. After all, rights such as life, health, dignity, and property mean very little if the environment in which people live is unsafe or polluted.
Nigeria's legal position, however, tells a different story. While the country has enacted several environmental laws and is a party to a number of international and regional environmental agreements, the Constitution does not expressly guarantee the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as an enforceable fundamental right. Instead, Section 20 of the Constitution places environmental protection under the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy. Although this provision requires the State to protect and improve the environment and safeguard Nigeria's air, land, water, forests, and wildlife, it is generally regarded as non-justiciable. In simple terms, a citizen cannot ordinarily rely on Section 20 alone to compel the government to fulfil these constitutional obligations in court.
This blog explores how environmental rights have evolved from a policy concern into a human rights issue, examines the constitutional gap that continues to limit their protection in Nigeria, and makes the case for recognising the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as an enforceable constitutional right.
Environmental Protection Is About People, Not Just Nature
When most people think about environmental protection, they picture forests, wildlife, rivers, and endangered species. While protecting nature is undoubtedly important, the conversation has grown far beyond conservation. Today, environmental protection is increasingly recognised as a matter of human rights because environmental harm affects people first.
Think about it. A polluted river is more than an environmental problem, it deprives families of safe drinking water and destroys the livelihoods of fishing communities. Poor air quality contributes to respiratory illnesses, while flooding and desertification displace families, reduce food production, and push more people into poverty. Climate change only makes these challenges worse, exposing millions of people to greater risks of hunger, disease, displacement, and conflict.
For this reason, environmental degradation should not be viewed as a problem affecting nature alone. It directly threatens the conditions that allow people to live healthy, dignified, and productive lives.
The international community has increasingly embraced this reality. The 1972 Stockholm Declaration was the first major global instrument to recognise that every person is entitled to live in an environment that permits a life of dignity and well-being. Two decades later, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development reinforced this principle by recognising that human beings are at the centre of sustainable development and by promoting important ideas such as public participation, access to environmental information, and environmental justice.
More recently, climate change has strengthened the connection between environmental protection and human rights. The 2015 Paris Agreement acknowledges that climate change has implications for the enjoyment of human rights and calls on States to take climate action while respecting their human rights obligations.
For Nigeria, however, perhaps the most significant legal instrument is the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. Unlike many international human rights treaties, the Charter expressly recognises environmental rights. Article 24 provides that every people has the right to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development. This provision is particularly important because the African Charter is not just an international treaty, it is part of Nigerian law. Having been domesticated by the National Assembly, its provisions are enforceable before Nigerian courts. That means Nigerians already have a legal foundation for advancing environmental rights, even though the Constitution does not expressly recognise the right to a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental right.
Nigeria's Constitutional Contradiction
If environmental protection is so important, why is it still so difficult for Nigerians to enforce environmental rights in court? Section 20 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) provides that "the State shall protect and improve the environment and safeguard the water, air and land, forest and wildlife of Nigeria." On paper, this is a strong commitment. It recognises that protecting the environment is one of the government's constitutional responsibilities. The challenge, however, is where this provision is located.
Section 20 forms part of Chapter II of the Constitution, which contains the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy. These provisions were intended to guide government policies and national development. However, by virtue of Section 6(6)(c) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), they are generally not enforceable in court. In practical terms, this means that a citizen cannot ordinarily institute an action solely because the government has failed to fulfil its obligations under Section 20.
This creates an obvious contradiction. On one hand, the Constitution expects the government to protect the environment. On the other, it limits the ability of the courts to hold the government accountable when that duty is neglected. As a result, environmental protection often depends more on political will than on legal obligation.
The consequences are far-reaching. Communities affected by pollution, illegal waste disposal, deforestation, flooding, or other forms of environmental degradation frequently face an uphill battle in seeking justice. Even where environmental harm is obvious, the absence of an enforceable constitutional right makes it more difficult to compel government action or challenge official inaction.
Yet this constitutional limitation has not completely closed the door on environmental justice. Over the years, Nigerian courts have adopted a more progressive approach by interpreting existing constitutional rights alongside international human rights obligations. In doing so, they have demonstrated that environmental rights can, in appropriate cases, be protected through the broader framework of fundamental human rights.
How Nigerian Courts Are Advancing Environmental Rights
Although Section 20 of the Constitution is generally regarded as non-justiciable, Nigerian courts have shown that this does not mean environmental rights are entirely beyond legal protection. Rather than allowing constitutional technicalities to stand in the way of justice, the courts have increasingly relied on fundamental rights and international human rights obligations to protect people affected by environmental harm.
The Supreme Court confirmed this position in Fawehinmi v. Abacha (2000) 6 NWLR (Pt. 660) 228, where it held that the African Charter, having been enacted by the National Assembly, has the force of law in Nigeria. This decision significantly strengthened the legal basis for environmental rights because Article 24 of the Charter expressly guarantees every people the right to "a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development."
The practical significance of this provision became even more apparent in the Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) and Centre for Economic and Social Rights v. Nigeria (2001) AHRLR 60 (ACHPR 2001). The case arose from the widespread environmental degradation in Ogoniland caused by decades of oil exploration. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights found that Nigeria had violated several provisions of the African Charter, including the rights to health, property, natural resources, and a satisfactory environment. Perhaps the most important lesson from the SERAC decision is that governments cannot escape responsibility simply because environmental harm is caused by private companies. Where the State fails to regulate polluting industries or enforce environmental standards, it may itself be held accountable for violating human rights.
In addition, in Jonah Gbemre v. Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria Ltd & Others (Suit No. FHC/B/CS/53/05, Judgment delivered on 14 November 2005), the Federal High Court held that the constitutional rights to life and human dignity guaranteed under Sections 33 and 34 of the Constitution necessarily include the right to a clean, pollution-free, and healthy environment. The Court further declared that the continued practice of gas flaring violated those constitutional rights. These decisions demonstrate that, even without an express constitutional right to a healthy environment, Nigerian courts have increasingly recognised that environmental protection is inseparable from the protection of fundamental human rights.
Environmental Degradation Threatens Multiple Constitutional Rights
The greatest impact of environmental degradation is on people. A polluted environment undermines several constitutional rights that Nigerians are entitled to enjoy.
The first and perhaps most obvious is the right to life guaranteed under Section 33(1) of the Constitution. Human life depends on clean air, safe drinking water, fertile agricultural land, and a healthy ecosystem. Pollution, gas flaring, oil spills, toxic waste, flooding, desertification, and climate-related disasters all threaten human survival. It is therefore impossible to meaningfully protect the right to life without protecting the environment in which life is sustained.
Environmental degradation also undermines the right to health. Air pollution contributes to respiratory diseases, contaminated water spreads infectious illnesses, and poor waste management creates breeding grounds for disease. Although the Nigerian Constitution does not expressly recognise an enforceable right to health, international human rights instruments to which Nigeria is a party make it clear that good health cannot be realised in a polluted environment.
In addition, the right to property is equally vulnerable. Across many communities in Nigeria, particularly in oil-producing areas, pollution has destroyed farmlands, fishing waters, economic trees, and residential properties. For many families, environmental degradation does not only affect where they live; it destroys the very means by which they earn a livelihood.
Furthermore, another less obvious, but equally significant, is the impact on the right to freedom of religion. In Chief Otoko & Others v. Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (Suit No. BHC/83/83, High Court of Rivers State, Bori Judicial Division, judgment delivered on 15 January 1985), the plaintiffs alleged that an oil spill polluted their drinking water, destroyed aquatic life, and desecrated their sacred shrine — the place through which they worshipped and communicated with their gods. Although the case is rarely discussed, it illustrates that environmental pollution can interfere not only with economic and social rights but also with the freedom to practise one's religion.
The Way Forward: A Case for Constitutional Reform
The progress made by Nigerian courts deserves recognition, but judicial innovation should not be the primary means of protecting environmental rights. Citizens should not have to rely on indirect legal arguments to secure protection from environmental harm.
Section 20 already reflects the Constitution's commitment to environmental protection. The real problem is that this commitment remains largely unenforceable. Relocating Section 20 from Chapter II to Chapter IV of the Constitution would transform environmental protection from a policy objective into a constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right. Such a reform would provide citizens with a direct legal remedy against environmental harm, strengthen accountability in environmental governance, and bring Nigeria's Constitution into closer alignment with its obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and other international environmental instruments.
As environmental challenges continue to intensify, constitutional recognition of environmental rights is no longer a matter of aspiration, it is a constitutional necessity. The time has come for policymakers, legislators, the judiciary, civil society organisations, and citizens to support constitutional reform that guarantees every Nigerian the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment.