The Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre) has unveiled a new comprehensive report on petroleum environmental governance in Nigeria, providing a detailed roadmap for legal, policy, and institutional reforms in the country’s oil and gas sector.
Released with support from the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), the report titled “Nigeria’s Petroleum-Environmental Governance: Law, Policy, and Reform Roadmap”, comes four years after the passage of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021.
It notes that despite the law’s promises of stronger governance, improved environmental protection, enhanced community development, and greater transparency, implementation has fallen short. Challenges such as weak enforcement, overlapping institutional mandates, poor compliance culture, and low community awareness continue to undermine the Act’s impact.
HEDA Chairman, Olanrewaju Suraju, said the report was developed to address the persistent gap between Nigeria’s extensive legal frameworks and the realities in oil-producing communities.
“The continuing issues around oil spill response, gas flaring, decommissioning obligations, host community development, and beneficial ownership transparency show that regulators, operators, communities, and civil society actors still lack the tools needed to drive accountability,” he said.
To address these gaps, HEDA Resource Centre with the collaboration of Environmental Law Research Institute (ELRI) developed a Stakeholder Accountability Tool and a Simplified Policy Brief. These tools outline statutory obligations under the PIA and other environmental laws, highlight key lapses in implementation, and provide practical guidance to empower communities, civil society, media, and regulators to demand compliance and promote environmental stewardship.
The report provides a comprehensive analysis of Nigeria’s petroleum environmental governance landscape, examining legal frameworks, institutional structures, and operational mechanisms meant to ensure environmental prevention, mitigation, remediation, and accountability. It draws on doctrinal research, comparative benchmarking, and stakeholder feedback generated through surveys and interviews.
According to the report findings, Nigeria already possesses the foundational elements of a world-class governance system. However, these elements remain fragmented. The study further calls for clearer institutional mandates, stronger enforcement mechanisms, recalibrated penalties, better management of environmental liabilities during divestment and decommissioning, and real-time public access to petroleum-environment data, including emissions, spills, remediation progress, and host community development funding.
It also recommended modernizing the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regime to reflect climate realities and integrating host communities and credible civil society actors as active partners in monitoring the sector.
Speaking on next steps, Suraju emphasized the need for “deliberate sequencing and sustained political will” to drive reforms. He highlighted priorities such as legislative updates, institutional integration, financial assurance systems, community oversight, capacity strengthening, and improved judicial and administrative efficiency.
“With discipline, transparency, and collaboration, Nigeria can evolve from an extractive state to a responsible energy steward one that places environmental governance at the heart of sustainable prosperity,” he said.
The publication reinforces HEDA’s longstanding commitment to promoting transparency, accountability, and justice in Nigeria’s extractive sector. The organisation said it will continue advocating to ensure that the PIA and related governance frameworks translate into tangible benefits for citizens and frontline communities.
