In Nigeria’s Niger Delta, oil pollution has significantly harmed the natural environment on which the local people in the Niger Delta depend for their livelihood and sustenance. The direct consequence of oil pollution is that it has led to multidimensional and protracted conflicts in oil-bearing communities. Drawing on fieldwork data, this article examines the ways in which oil pollution harms water resources and fuels conflicts in the local communities. It explores the socio-economic dynamics of the conflicts and insecurity, and how they are aggravated by the ineffectiveness of the measures adopted by the state to manage the conflicts. It argues that the role of local actors in the ecological dislocation have been downplayed and not factored into the measures devised to tackle the intractable conflicts. This article demonstrates how the network of interactions among localised, national and globalised actors aggravate environmental pollution and the complex conflicts in local communities.

The extraction, processing and transport of crude oil in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria has long been associated with collateral environmental damage to the largest mangrove ecosystem in Africa. Oil pollution is impacting not only one of the planet’s most ecologically diverse regions but also the health, livelihoods, and social cohesion of the Delta region inhabitants. Quantifying and directly associating localised oil pollution events to specific petrochemical infrastructure is complicated by the difficulty of monitoring such vast and complex terrain, with documented concerns regarding the thoroughness and impartiality of reported oil pollution events. Earth Observation (EO) offers a means to deliver such a monitoring and assessment capability using Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) measurements as a proxy for mangrove biomass health. However, the utility of EO can be impacted by persistent cloud cover in such regions. To overcome such challenges here, we present a workflow that leverages EO-derived high-resolution (10 m) synthetic aperture radar data from the Sentinel-1 satellite constellation combined with machine learning to conduct observations of the spatial land cover changes associated with oil pollution-induced mangrove mortality proximal to pipeline networks in a 9000 km² region of Rivers State located near Port Harcourt. Our analysis identified significant deforestation from 2016–2024, with an estimated mangrove mortality rate of 5644 hectares/year. Using our empirically derived Pipeline Impact Indicator (PII), we mapped the oil pipeline network to 1 km resolution, highlighting specific pipeline locations in need of immediate intervention and restoration, and identified several new pipeline sites showing evidence of significant oil spill damage that have yet to be formally reported. Our findings emphasise the critical need for the continuous and comprehensive monitoring of oil extractive regions using satellite remote sensing to support decision-making and policies to mitigate environmental and societal damage from pipeline oil spills, particularly in ecologically vulnerable regions such as the Niger Delta.

Drawing on their own field studies, the authors examine how state and local actors involved in resource management and peacebuilding activities are implicated in the conflict between farmers and herders in Plateau State, Nigeria, and Central Darfur State, Sudan. The authors show that state officials, traditional chiefs, and security agents intensified the conflict by perpetuating the inequitable distribution of resources needed for the survival of farmers and herders, while promoting a peacebuilding process that empowered some groups and disempowered others. The divisive role state and local actors played accentuated the socio-political grievances underlying the conflict and enervated the peacebuilding process.

The destructive impacts of oil exploitation on the natural environment, which the inhabitants of the Niger Delta depend on for their livelihood, pose major threats to food security. Environmental damage alienates the local people from their ancestral lands and erodes their sources of livelihood. This study examines the effect of oil exploitation on the local people's access to sufficient, safe and culturally acceptable food. The study is based on data collected through interviews with key informants and Focus Group Discussions in the oil communities in Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers States. Environmental and livelihood sustainability are intricately interconnected. They have significant implications for food security of people in the oil-rich region. Nutritional adequacy is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for food security because cultural acceptability is also required. This study addresses the interplay between these factors and their implications for household food security in the Niger Delta.

Frustrated by decades of authoritarian rule, political repression, economic mismanagement, poverty, soaring unemployment and other related injustices, the youth in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya rose up against the state, while Algeria and Morocco narrowly escaped the events of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. This quest for political reform is an indication of a great collective shift that has the potential to reverberate throughout the African continent. However, to what extent can the youth succeed in bringing about the much-desired transition to democracy? This article focuses on the North African youth uprising and the quest for political reform in Africa. It examines the core issues of the youth uprising and the challenges to the attainment of political reform. A youth uprising can lead to genuine political reform if the major challenges in building new democratic forms of governance which can address economic disparity, protection of human rights, justice and security, can be overcome.

This paper explores and analyses understandings of poverty in the Yorùbá traditional belief system, based on the concept of Orí and Ẹlédàá. The paper focuses on questions such as: how are the concepts of Orí and Ẹlédàá used in understanding, interpreting and addressing poverty? What implications do these belief systems have for the quest for poverty eradication in contemporary Nigerian societies? This belief system seems to be at variance with the World Bank and other international organizations’ notions of poverty and suggested measures to eradicate it. I argue that the contribution of local belief systems to development discourses cannot be ignored.