While the activities of multinational oil corporations contribute significantly to oil pollution and environmental degradation in most oil-producing countries, the extent to which illegal artisanal refineries contribute to the environmental problems in Niger Delta remains unclear. Extant literature attributes this to the expanding activities of the artisans as well as the use of crude technology in illegal oil refining. Given the widespread nature of the artisanal oil-refining economy in the Niger Delta region, we assess its contribution to the growing environmental pollution in the region. By artisanal oil refining, we mean small-scale crude oil processing or subsistent distillation of petroleum that is often outside the boundaries of the state law. This study links the continual failure of the clean-up programme in the Niger Delta to the booming artisanal crude oil-refining economy in the region. Using predominantly qualitative methods of data collection and content analysis, we adopted the enterprise value chain analysis to underscore the underlying local economic interests and external economic opportunities that sustain oil bunkering, oil theft and petro-piracy. We conclude that these illegal refining processes significantly undermine the Ogoniland clean-up project and make the remediation programme unsustainable in Nigeria.

The emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in November 2019 has nearly brought the world to a halt. Recording her first COVID-19 case on 27 February 2020, the Nigerian government’s default response to the pandemic was to lock down major parts of the country, among other measures. Despite the nationwide lockdown, inter-state travel continued unabated as many travellers bribed their way through the different checkpoints mounted by security agencies. As a result of the prevalence of ‘normed corruption’, the lockdown only created opportunity for brazen extortion by law enforcement officials. Using the institutional corruption theory as our framework of analysis, and coupled with the use of both primary and secondary data generated during the lockdown, the paper noted that entrenched culture of extortionate policing in the ranks of security forces meant that arrest and prosecution of violators of the lockdown became a distant concern. The result is that COVID-19 suspects or carriers travelled from one state to another without being detected. It concludes that Nigeria should leverage lessons learned from policing COVID-19 in framing future responses in containment measures.

The rapid escalation of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) elicited varying degrees of responses from governments. The escalation and community spread of the COVID-19 pandemic despite initial responses resulted in a lockdown strategy in some countries. Nigeria embraced a lockdown policy, albeit with some socioeconomic stimulus measures to cushion the resultant economic hardship. The inadequacy of the stimulus measures led to lockdown violations and human rights abuses. This study establishes the nexus between Nigeria’s lockdown policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic, human rights violations, and the role of Nigerian civil society in mainstreaming civil rights protection during this public health emergency.

Even though the Nigeria–Niger border is a significant gateway for human trafficking to Europe, it has received limited scholarly attention. The study used ethnographic and documentary methods to argue for adopting community-based border policing (CBBP) on the Nigeria–Niger border to complement border surveillance strategy (BSS). Despite the reliance on surveillance strategies, crimes like human trafficking have persisted on the Nigeria–Niger border. This state of affairs has necessitated the need to explore more comprehensive ways to police the border, for which CBBP is relevant to help in mitigating human trafficking on the Nigeria–Niger border.