Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri2
Abstract At the 2021 United Nations (UN) Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in Glasgow, Nigeria committed to renewable energy to contain carbon emissions responsible for global warming. Its subsequent national Energy Transition Plan pledged to cut emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. Decades of oil exploration in Nigeria’s Niger Delta have caused extensive environmental damage resulting in the destruction of traditional livelihoods, economic strangulation, and widespread poverty. Multinational oil corporations are now divesting rapidly, leaving behind a trail of environmental pollution without compensation to impacted communities. The clash between fossil-fuel phase-outs and local people’s environmental justice demands demonstrate the imperative of embedding justice and inclusion into green energy solutions. Drawing from the experiences of Nigeria’s oil-rich communities in the Niger Delta, this article argues that placing justice at the centre of national and global decarbonisation agendas is essential for ensuring that greener solutions do not contribute to human rights abuses and exacerbate pre-existing environmental challenges.
Resumen En la Conferencia de las Partes (COP) de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) de 2021 que se llevó a cabo en Glasgow, Nigeria se comprometió con las energías renovables para contener las emisiones de carbono responsables del calentamiento global. Su posterior Plan Nacional de Transición Energética prometió reducer las emisiones eliminando progresivamente los combustibles fósiles. Décadas de exploración petrolera en el Delta del Níger han provocado un daño ambiental extenso que resultó en la destrucción de medios de vida tradicionales, el estrangulamiento económico y una pobreza generalizada. Las corporaciones petroleras multinacionales ahora están retirando rápidamente sus inversiones, dejando tras de sí un rastro de contaminación ambiental sin compensaciones para las comunidades afectadas. El choque entre la eliminación de los combustibles fósiles y las demandas de justicia ambiental de las poblaciones locales demuestra la urgencia de incorporar justicia e inclusión en las soluciones de energía sostenible. Partiendo de las experiencias de las comunidades petroleras del Delta del Níger, este artículo sostiene que situar la justicia en el centro de las agendas de descarbonización nacionales y globales es esencial para garantizar que las soluciones más sostenibles no contribuyan a violaciones de derechos humanos ni agraven los desafíos ambientales preexistentes.
Resumo Na Conferência das Partes (COP) das Nações Unidas (ONU) realizada em Glasgow, em 2021, a Nigéria comprometeu‑se com as energias renováveis para conter as emissões de carbono responsáveis pelo aquecimento global. O subsequente Plano Nacional de Transição Energética assumiu o compromisso de reduzir as emissões através da eliminação progressiva dos combustíveis fósseis. Décadas de exploração petrolífera no Delta do Níger causaram danos ambientais extensos, resultando na destruição dos meios de subsistência tradicionais, na asfixia económica e na disseminação da pobreza. As multinacionais petrolíferas estão agora a desinvestir rapidamente, deixando atrás de si um rasto de poluição ambiental sem compensação para as comunidades afectadas. O choque entre a eliminação dos combustíveis fósseis e as reivindicações de justiça Ambiental das populações locais demonstra a necessidade imperiosa de integrar justiça e inclusão nas soluções de energia verde. Com base nas experiências das comunidades ricas em petróleo do Delta do Níger, este artigo argumenta que colocar a justiça no centro das agendas de descarbonização nacionais e globais é essencial para garantir que soluções mais verdes não contribuam para violações dos direitos humanos nem agravem os desafios ambientais já existentes.
Keywords energy transition, Niger Delta, communities, divestment, environment, energy.
Fossil fuels pollute land, water, air, and damage natural ecosystems, putting communities at risk. Yet fossil fuels, particularly crude oil, remains Nigeria’s highest revenue earner, with 408,680,457 barrels of crude oil produced in 2024 generating about ₦50.88tn3 (US$31.2bn) in 2024 or around one-sixth of gross domestic product (GDP) (Olawin 2025). Though lucrative, heightened exploration of crude oil is historically accompanied by frequent oil spills and extensive environmental damage. An average of 240,000 barrels of crude oil are spilled into the Niger Delta every year (Ordinioha and Brisibe 2013), and this has acute and long-term effects on human health. The oil spills in the Niger Delta have led to the release of harmful substances, causing an increase in health challenges, malnourishment among children, lack of access to clean water, and a host of other social, economic, and environmental challenges.
Yielding to global pressure, oil-dependent economies such as Nigeria are setting targets and deadlines for fossil-fuel phase‑outs. At the November 2021 COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Nigeria was among the countries that committed to leapfrogging towards renewable energy in order to contain the carbon emissions responsible for global warming. This commitment was significant for Nigeria as it set off a series of targeted actions towards climate resilience, beginning with the passage of the Climate Change Act4 in the same month. In its national Energy Transition Plan (ETP) issued in August 2022, Nigeria pledged to cut carbon emissions by phasing out the use of fossil fuels while setting a target of net-zero emissions by 2060.
Just as the clamour for energy transition is triggering major shifts in Nigeria’s energy policy and revenue landscape, so also are new theatres of discontent and tension springing up, especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Decades of oil exploration have caused extensive environmental damage in the region resulting in massive destruction of traditional livelihoods, economic strangulation, social unrest, and widespread poverty. To make matters worse, multinational oil corporations operating in Nigeria are now divesting rapidly, leaving behind a trail of extensive environmental pollution, oil spills, gas flares,5 blowouts,6 and fires, surreptitiously avoiding compensation to impacted households and communities. Extraction-affected communities are therefore demanding clean-ups as a precondition to the divestments and fossil-fuel phase-outs. Matching resistance with action, local communities have approached national courts to seek to stop corporations from divesting onshore oil assets and exiting the Niger Delta without first decommissioning obsolete infrastructure, remediating environmental damage, and compensating the impacted people for long-standing harm (Natsa 2025).
The brewing clash between fossil-fuel phase-outs and the environmental justice demands of local people demonstrates the imperative of embedding justice (and inclusion) into green energy solutions. This article argues that placing justice at the centre of national and global decarbonisation agendas is an important formula for ensuring that the much-touted greener solutions do not contribute to human rights abuses and exacerbate pre‑existing environmental challenges.
Drawing from the experiences of Nigeria’s oil-rich communities in the Niger Delta, this article examines how procedural, restorative, and distributive justice can be promoted in contexts marked by environmental degradation, regulatory deficits, and historical exclusion (S4C 2023a). It draws extensively from the research, field visits, interviews, and observations carried out under the Just Transitions Learning Project (JTLP)7 implemented in the Niger Delta between January 2022 and November 2023. During the research, 15 key informant interviews, seven focus group discussions, one virtual interview, and one email response to queries were held with traditional rulers, artisanal refiners, youth leaders, and women and men community members in three oil-rich states in the Niger Delta – Imo, Bayelsa, and Rivers – all of which are heavily impacted by the social, financial, and environmental effects of oil exploration and extraction.
These were followed by a one-day symposium hosted by Spaces for Change (S4C) in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) held on 25 October 2023, and attended by civil society organisations (CSOs), government officials, academics, and representatives from oil-producing communities. The article also draws on research data from the project Making Space for Dialogue on Just Transitions in Africa’s Oil and Gas Producing Regions, which identified challenges, enabling conditions, and entry points for ensuring inclusive deliberation on what a just transition would look like for the citizens of oil- and gas-producing regions in sub-Saharan Africa.8 Addressing the concerns and priorities of the target groups engaged during these projects is pivotal for catalysing a just transition where no one is left behind.
The article proceeds as follows. Section 2 considers the domestic energy context in Nigeria. Section 3 examines the elitist pathway to energy transition. Section 4 dives deeper into community struggles for justice while Section 5 analyses the impact of energy transition. Section 6 presents why just energy transition matters. Section 7 concludes with a rethink of energy transition and ways forward.
Energy sources in Nigeria include coal, petroleum, natural gas, peat, hydroelectricity, solar, and wind. However, energy generation as of the third quarter of 2023 – comprising about 27 grid-connected power stations (NERC 2023) – is basically derived from two sources: hydro and gas. Of the 27 power stations, 19 are gas‑powered, four hydro, two steam, and two gas/steam-powered plants, making natural gas the most common energy source in Nigeria (ibid.). Declining power generation capacities witnessed since 2020 have aggravated the sporadic power supply in the country, further lessening energy access for over 200 million citizens, and resulting in about 92 million people – about 40.37 per cent of the country’s population – either facing acute electricity shortages, or no access to electricity at all (IEA et al. 2022).
Energy poverty is particularly prevalent in rural areas, including the predominantly low-income communities in the oil-rich Niger Delta, with many communities either unable to access electricity 87.4 per cent of the time or totally unconnected to the national grid (Heinrich Böll Stiftung 2022). In Nigeria’s top oil-producing Delta State with a daily output of 346,000 barrels per day (Omoboye 2025), more than half of the population is either entirely off-grid or significantly underserved by the national grid (Heinrich Böll Stiftung 2022). Like Delta State, the Assa community in Ohaji Egbema, Imo State, hosts one of the biggest gas plant projects in West Africa operated by the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) and the Seplat Petroleum Development Company. Lamentations about total blackouts have persisted for decades but are often ignored. An Assa community leader bewailed, ‘Oil companies have been extracting oil and gas in Assa since 1959, but to date, there is no single electric pole, not to talk of electricity in this area’.9
With over 12 million residents across the Niger Delta yet to be reached by the national grid, dependency on petrol- or diesel‑powered generators is high, making Nigeria one of the largest users of back-up generators on the continent (Kemp 2024). Despite its grave economic and environmental impacts, illegal or artisanal refining of crude oil has also surged across the region, simultaneously creating jobs for local youths while producing locally refined fuels used for power generation, including cooking and transportation (Agheyisi 2023). It is against this backdrop that addressing energy poverty and improving livelihoods lie at the core of the country’s energy transition plans.
Nigeria’s Vice-President stated that ‘The problem of energy poverty, for Africa, is as important as our climate ambitions’ (Ayeni 2022). Accordingly, Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan (ETP) (2021) prioritised the provision of energy for development, industrialisation, and economic growth in order to address the twin challenges of energy poverty and climate change to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7, which calls for ‘affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all’ by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2060 (Sustainable Energy for All n.d.). The ETP projects to ‘lift 100 million people out of poverty…; bring modern energy services to the full population and manage the long term job loss in the oil sector that will result from global decarbonization’ (The Energy Circle n.d.).
Nigeria’s ETP asks two major questions: (1) What is required for Nigeria to achieve net zero by 2050 and (2) What would be a realistic timeline, given the need to balance emission reductions with economic development imperatives? (S4C 2022). In seeking answers to these questions, national policy development processes and practices around energy transition have favoured state-centric and corporation-centric discourses and negotiations, with minimal inputs from local communities. Understandably, state inputs were considered critical because energy transition will mean less demand for Nigerian oil, which translates to a major loss of export capacity for the country especially in the immediate future. The major consequence is that Nigeria will likely lose most of its foreign exchange earnings and revenues for both the federal and subnational governments (Osayande 2022). Expectations of dwindling revenues have ignited actions to diversify national income streams to other sources including renewable energy.
On the other hand, companies’ participation is ostensibly vital considering that many Nigerian and multinational oil companies have invested immensely (Cavcic 2024) in the development of oil wells and marginal fields both onshore and offshore, pipeline infrastructure projects, and power plants, and are yet to recoup their investments. The combined interests of states and corporations have prompted the framing, negotiation, and development of climate policies and solutions in formal spaces, often located in the nation’s federal capital and the capitals of the 36 states that comprise the federation. These formal spaces where states and corporations usually congregate traditionally excludes local/community participation.
The exclusion of local participation in the national transition agenda finds its most significant expression in the ETP’s silence on communities. The ETP document, encapsulating Nigeria’s pathway to net zero, makes no reference to communities, and as such, makes no provision to cater to the needs of communities most impacted by decades of fossil-fuel exploration. The interests of oil and gas companies, on the other hand, are highly visible: oil and gas companies have published elaborate policy statements on their websites and made rebranding arrangements, demonstrating their commitments and support for national emission reduction strategies, but they are all similarly silent on local communities’ needs. For instance, SPDC’s strategy document, released in 2021, expressed support for energy transition and commits to becoming a net-zero energy business by 2050 (Shell n.d.). Oil and gas giant Total transformed into TotalEnergies in 2021 in demonstration of its resolve to be an energy company committed to the production and provision of clean and affordable energy (TotalEnergies 2021).
One major fallout of community exclusion is the low awareness of energy transition and national climate targets at subnational and community levels. The consequence is that relevant actors at those levels do not thoroughly understand what their role is in the context of the energy transition and climate change (George-Ikoli and Molineris 2024).
While the ETP focuses on attracting investment, it lacks specificity about the federal government’s responsibilities going forward, as well as the ways in which local communities can participate to ensure the plan moves in a direction that addresses their historic claims and current needs (ibid.). Independent studies further corroborate that among several factors, low awareness of the transition process and poor social inclusion top the list of strong barriers to carbon neutrality in Nigeria (Ogbonna et al. 2023). These gaps have spurred calls to accommodate the voices of communities and CSOs working to ensure energy democracy for a more people-centred approach to sourcing energy resources (Abdullahi 2024).
The mention of the Niger Delta typically evokes images of people livid with rage, blowing up oil pipelines, illegally siphoning oil from exposed pipelines, or masked men boldly displaying AK‑47 rifles in the creeks, swamps, and mangroves criss-crossing the entire length and breadth of the region. Unfortunately, these images of volatility and restiveness are rarely accompanied by the narratives of the local people caught in the middle of this spiralling conflict – where gas flares are killing crops, polluting water, and damaging human health (Schick, Myles and Okelum 2018), occasioning harms to the local environment and massive poverty to the region (Bala-Gbogbo 2024). The extensive damage to the local environment triggered violent agitations in the region, with Nigeria losing about US$3.5bn annually due to conflicts mainly between oil and gas companies and host communities (Akpan and Akpabio 2009).
The Ogoni movement brought the issue of the Niger Delta to international prominence in the 1990s (Boele, Fabig and Wheeler 2001). As with most communities across the region, the discovery of oil devastated the environment of Ogoniland, and was accompanied by suffocating levels of land takeovers for mineral oil extraction, pollution, livelihood losses, and poverty. Worse still, indigenous communities were rarely, if ever, compensated for the land takeovers and environmental destruction by oil companies. Where compensated, they received only a fraction of the deserved compensation. Military repression of the agitations for compensation and environmental justice resulted in thousands of Ogoni being killed, raped, beaten, detained, and exiled, and the main leaders executed (ibid.: 1) until Shell was forced to pull out from Ogoniland in 1993 following intense pressure. The Nigerian government and oil companies have introduced a variety of development initiatives and social responsibility schemes to address the protracted hostilities, but surging local discontent in the region suggest that none of them has effectively delivered tangible benefits to local people (Uzoigwe and Ibezim‑Ohaeri 2025).
As the global clamour for energy transition gains momentum around the world, communities ravaged by the repercussions of oil spillage on their lands, and in their water and air, are afraid and deeply worried. This fear is well founded: multinational oil corporations, like Shell, are divesting from the onshore oil industry in the Niger Delta without taking responsibility for its toxic legacy of pollution dating back to the 1950s and without the safe decommissioning of abandoned oil infrastructure (Gaughran 2024). The oil giant is leaving behind petroleum-contaminated rivers and streams and large areas of polluted land that have devastated the lives and livelihoods of millions of people living in the Niger Delta (ibid.). Shell has profited from oil extraction for decades and, in doing so, has made the Niger Delta one of the most oil-polluted places on earth, leaving communities to face the dire consequences that will remain well beyond the lifetime of the industry (ibid.). Allowing corporations to divest from petroleum assets without clean-up stands heavily against communities’ pursuit of restorative justice.
In April 2024, Nigeria’s upstream petroleum regulatory body – the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) – rolled out a framework to guide divestments which rests upon seven cardinal pillars: (1) technical capacity, (2) financial capability, (3) legal considerations, (4) decommissioning and abandonment, (5) host community trust/environmental remediation fund, (6) industrial relations and labour issues, and (7) data repatriation. The tidal wave of divestment without clean-ups prompted the Nigerian parliament to demand that applications for divestment by international oil companies, including Shell and TotalEnergies, be halted until they meet their environmental and social obligations to the Niger Delta (Yakubu 2025). The authorities observed that approving Shell’s or TotalEnergies’ divestment requests without addressing these historical and ongoing liabilities risks undermining Nigeria’s regulatory independence, transferring corporate responsibilities to the Nigerian state, and signalling impunity for environmental crimes. In support of this parliamentary disapproval, the NUPRC further ‘rejected Shell’s divestment application, citing failure to address environmental liabilities (in line with the divestment framework) and concerns about the capacity of the Renaissance Consortium to manage the assets effectively’ (Esifiho 2024).
In a dramatic turn of events, in December 2024, Shell got the ministerial nod to proceed with the divestments, dashing the hopes of restorative justice espoused in the NUPRC’s divestment framework. The substantial media reports regarding the final approval contain no reference to Shell’s fulfilment of these seven essential conditions, especially addressing labour and communities’ liabilities. There is no publicly available information showing whether Shell satisfied these conditions, nor did the NUPRC conduct detailed assessments of new operators’ financial, technical, and environmental capacities before granting approval. In simple terms, Nigerian authorities appear to have approved the sale without making clear and transparent arrangements to ensure that Shell’s environmental and social liabilities have been fully addressed.
These twists and turns, coupled with other factors such as policy exclusion, poverty, and low awareness of national transition plans, have not only eroded local confidence in the national climate agenda, but also limited opportunities for mobilising community support for national decarbonisation strategies. Across the Imo and Rivers communities in the Niger Delta, the energy transition debate has become increasingly polarised, with some fully in support and others hesitant or outrightly resisting the proposal to phase out fossil fuels (S4C 2022).
Regardless of which side of the debate they cling to, communities unanimously agree that energy transition cannot be separated from their historical clamour for environmental justice (Mmadu 2013). Corroborating this premise, the lawsuit filed by the traditional ruler of Ekpetiama Kingdom in the Yenagoa Local Government Area of Bayelsa State in the Niger Delta argues that Shell’s planned divestment, without fulfilling its environmental obligations in accordance with the Nigerian Constitution and laws, is illegal and unjust. The lawsuit also berates the Nigerian authorities, especially the NUPRC, for failing in its duty to prevent corporate evasion of responsibility (Natsa 2025).
In other words, community support for energy transition is conditioned on the presentation of a clear and predictable roadmap for righting the wrongs which fossil fuels have done to extraction-affected communities. Without such concrete and targeted measures being in place, energy transition remains a one-sided agenda that largely favours the corporations that perpetrated the injustices (S4C 2022). Due to the government’s failure to adequately regulate and punish environmental harms, companies often deny responsibility for problems that they caused and institute community development assistance or corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects as though they are a form of charity for affected communities (Ibezim-Ohaeri 2024). Communities no longer wish to be passive recipients of handouts from corporations, but active stakeholders and participants in the energy industry. According to one state official in Rivers State,
We no longer need handouts packaged as corporate social responsibility programmes… We need enforceable legal standards prescribing the modalities and the precise renewable energy company contributions to community development as one of the necessary ingredients of a just transition. This will empower communities to hold multinationals accountable for non-adherence to negotiated agreements.10
As the Shell divestment saga in Nigeria makes clear, many communities, particularly in Imo and Rivers, strongly doubt that regulatory authorities will come to their rescue when corporations violate environmental regulations, even in an era of energy transition. Over the years, sustained regulatory inaction and lack of corporate accountability in the regions most affected by fossil-fuel extraction prove that the micro-level interests of local people have always been relegated while macroeconomic considerations are prioritised. A litany of judicial proclamations by national, regional, and foreign courts which ordered companies to pay restitution have not been enforced. Courts have held that Shell’s business operations violated communities’ constitutionally guaranteed rights to life, human dignity, a healthy environment, and a standard of living.11 These court orders have been flagrantly disobeyed, fuelling deeper doubts in the minds of local people as conversations about energy transition begin to gain momentum. There is no assurance – especially in the absence of adequate regulatory or judicial protection – that the transition to renewable energy resources will make a serious difference, or usher in a new environmental order.
What difference will the shift to new energy sources bring? Are we going to start having better access to electricity? Will the government and corporations suddenly start paying adequate compensation for both taking and destroying our lands for several decades?12
Community leaders have repeatedly asked these questions, but the answers are not forthcoming. Here are a few reasons why communities are sceptical about the benefits of fossil-fuel phase‑outs, insisting that justice should be at the centre of energy transition.
Most renewable energy sources require extensive land. For example, the construction of solar panels or solar farms requires the clearing and grading of people’s farms which could lead to land takeovers, soil compaction, erosion, and alteration of drainage channels (Solar Energy Development Programmatic EIS 2012). As with many communities in the Niger Delta, Imo State’s economy is primarily driven by agriculture and trade while agricultural production remains a key pillar, with palm oil serving as a staple for many households (Akinjiola, Ibezim-Ohaeri and Louis-Udeh 2025). Giving more rural land over to spatially extensive renewable energy projects would jeopardise the food security and livelihoods of the local population. Fears about the imminent loss of farmlands and displacement from ancestral lands are widespread, stirring even more anger and potential resistance to renewable energy initiatives.
As has been the practice under fossil-fuel extraction, communities fear that the government will adopt the brutish compulsory land acquisition procedures (Ibezim-Ohaeri et al. 2021) of the national land policy – the Land Use Act of 197813 – to take their land in the name of renewable energy development. Even where consultations take place, they are conducted as a mere formality, in total disregard for the principles of free and informed consent. Investment projects involving the relocation of local communities are contentious and frequently resisted or disrupted14 because consultations either commenced at a very late stage or were brazenly non-participatory.
States in the Niger Delta such as Imo are home to several freshwater water bodies, including the Awbana, Imo, Orashi, and Otamiri rivers, and Oguta Lake, all of which demonstrate considerable potential for hydropower generation. Hydropower generators produce clean electricity but can disrupt and even destroy entire ecosystems by blocking the annual inflow of sediments and nutrients, as well as migratory fish populations (Poelking 2018). Because the construction of the dams and reservoirs required in hydropower plants causes large amounts of greenhouse gases to be emitted, it is not wholly environmentally friendly and can further impact the critical services these rivers and freshwater ecosystems can provide (ibid.).
Site clearing for the establishment of hydropower projects could have an impact on local cultural sites, especially in coastal communities where sacred water bodies (rivers, lakes, streams, ponds, oceans, and holy wells) are also important abodes of primordial spirit beings where they are deified or worshipped (Raheem 2024). The abysmally low compensation sums paid further corrode cultural freedoms while exacerbating the socioeconomic difficulties associated with the loss of land. The concerns of indigenous communities who often have profound cultural and social-political values and spiritual attachments to their rivers and land holdings have yet to be fully addressed in national transitional plans and policies.
Emerging evidence already shows that the rush to use transitional minerals, such as lithium, comes with a heavy environmental price tag. An independent study reported lithium concentration in ground and surface water sources used for drinking in Niger Delta communities in Imo and Abia States, Southeastern Nigeria (Ewuzie, Nnorom and Eze 2020). As the world shifts to electric vehicles and renewable energy, major players are investing in Nigeria’s lithium reserves and already building lithium-processing facilities in Nigerian communities. Some communities are already witnessing the substantial risks associated with poorly managed lithium extraction, such as the depletion of already-scarce water resources and the release of toxic metals into the environment. In Nasarawa State, in the north of Nigeria, ‘Nasarawa lithium mining is repeating the Niger Delta oil exploration havoc’ (Oboh 2024).
In the Bani community, Kwara State, northcentral Nigeria, the once-thriving farming community is now scarred by illegal lithium mining that has devastated its ecosystem (Asiegbu 2024). Farmers have been forced off their land and children have abandoned school to join the mining trade. Despite government crackdowns, illegal operations continue to flourish in these remote areas, often beyond the reach of authorities. Poorly regulated environmental activity has also resulted in falling local food production and rising unemployment, similar to the patterns witnessed in the Niger Delta for several decades. These negative developments increase the likelihood of opposition to renewable energy initiatives from community leaders, considering the significant waste generation, reduction of quality of life, increase in noise pollution, and other environmental hazards.
Our research found that vehement resistance to energy transition will be especially vociferous in Niger Delta communities where artisanal refining takes place (S4C 2022). Widespread poverty and unemployment have driven large numbers of people, including women, into artisanal refining, popularly known as the ‘kpo-fire business’ (Agheyisi 2023). Despite its negative effects on the environment and on human health, this illegal trade has created massive employment opportunities for local populations. Because of the prevalence of restiveness and criminality in these areas, phasing out fossil fuels without the provision of alternative sources of livelihoods could potentially become a recipe for renewed violence. In addition, the displacement of inhabitants from places close to their livelihoods could cause violent land conflicts between communities.
Low-income communities in developing countries lack both the technical and infrastructural resources to manage waste generated from renewable energy resources. Decommissioning solar panels at the end of their life cycle produces electronic waste and if improperly disposed of could lead to the release of toxic materials such as cadmium or lead into the environment.
Nothing has thwarted communities’ quest for distributive justice more than the heavily centralised governance and administration of natural resources in the country. Nigeria’s natural resource governance frameworks place oil and solid mineral development and management under the exclusive grip of the central government, totally excluding subnational governments and communities. The major consequence of this arrangement is that it constrains fair allocation of resources, benefits, and burdens between the federal, state, and local governments. Reminiscing about the distributive justice systems that held sway in earlier times, a local chief narrated:
In those days, people planted cocoa and sold it to the government, who then exported it and earned foreign exchange. Both the people and the government earned local money from cocoa sales. Returning to this sort of resource-sharing arrangement is more empowering and beneficial to communities.15
Realising distributive justice is not feasible without the inclusion of local communities in the national transition plan and decentralising the current natural resource governance systems. There is a clear perception that national authorities will eventually introduce legal regimes that preserve the governmental grip on renewable natural resources, the same as with fossil fuels, with the attendant centralised resource governance and management systems. If this happens, renewable energy will make no difference to communities in terms of impact and benefits.
‘How do you ask local women to stop using firewood when the price of kerosene and cooking gas is far beyond their reach?’, asked a woman leader from the Goi community (Ogoni), Rivers State.16 Those living in local communities are very concerned about the high costs and affordability of alternative cleaner fuels. Quality solar panels cost ₦50,000–200,000 (US$30‑130) per panel, depending on the wattage and brand, while inverter batteries, based on storage capacity and brand, cost ₦100,000–300,000 (US$64–194) (VisCorner 2025). A 3kVA17 battery is typically sufficient for small families; the total costs for acquiring one hovers above ₦1m (US$650) when the costs of installation, cabling, wiring, and maintenance are added. With the minimum wage pegged at ₦70,000 (US$45) per month (Adeduyite 2024), and most households living on less than US$2 per day (Olurounbi 2022), how many community members can afford solar panels to power their homes? While costs remain high, communities remain dependent on wood fuels, resulting in high levels of deforestation.
Another related issue is the availability of capital. Renewable energy production involves high operating costs and overheads resulting from the costs of connection, construction, upgrading of transmission/distribution lines, substations, and associated equipment (Ibezim-Ohaeri 2015). Even where communities successfully overcome resource constraints and invest in low-cost mini-grid projects, unevenly distributed incentives between large enterprises and smaller ones potentially gives rise to inequality and concentrates wealth in a few hands. Affordability and availability of economic resources are, in short, twin barriers to clean energy for local communities.
Addressing the challenges enumerated above will not be a walk in the park. It will require a multifaceted approach, involving strong political will, law and policy, stakeholder engagement, effective governance, and collaborations between government, the private sector, CSOs, and affected communities. To effectively lay the foundation for procedural justice, proposed climate solutions and energy transition strategies must consciously address policy, operational, and systemic dysfunctions witnessed in the fossil-fuel era, while incorporating considerations of politics and power in the transition process.
The hesitation to address historical injustices accounts for the setbacks slowing down the pace of the transition to a low‑carbon future. It is against this backdrop that communities in Imo, Rivers, and Bayelsa States are demanding a just and inclusive energy transition. So what does justice and inclusion mean? Why must justice lie at the core of energy transition? Will the benefits of renewable energy be distributed fairly and equitably? Who bears the responsibility for environmental recovery, and to mitigate job/livelihood losses? What are the spaces available for communities to participate and articulate their visions of justness in national decarbonisation interventions?
It has been contended that the principle of justness needs to be articulated and codified in a legal framework (S4C 2023b). And to pass the test of justness, the framework must first consider what justice means in the local context. According to the African Development Bank (AfDB),
[T]he just transition framework facilitates equitable access to the benefits and distribution of the costs of sustainable development ensuring that the livelihoods of all people, particularly the most vulnerable, are supported and enhanced as societies move toward low-carbon, climate‑resilient economies. A just transition affirms Africa’s right to development and industrialization, as captured in the Paris Agreement language on equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of differing national circumstances. (Boucetta 2024)
Transposing the AfDB’s framework to the Niger Delta context, the country’s historical dependence on crude oil for foreign exchange earnings sparks serious concerns about the looming revenue losses that will accompany phasing out fossil fuels. As oil-rich communities in the Niger Delta have neither developed nor fared any better despite oil windfalls in the fossil-fuel era, infrastructural under-development is likely to be worse during times of fiscal insufficiency. A sudden shift away from fossil fuels would have significant impact on local communities.
Discussions with Imo oil and gas-rich communities18 indicate a shared yearning for a new dawn marked by new methods, new possibilities, new opportunities, and new strategies for negotiating the costs and benefits of natural resources – whether fossil fuels or renewables. It needs to be reiterated that local support is conditioned on the expectation that renewable energy will give communities greater power and control over natural resource benefits than oil and gas has done.
Another point of convergence among the diverse perspectives we heard is increasing the engagement of marginalised groups in energy transition, with an emphasis placed on fair sharing of benefits and harm; inclusion of local people; and stakeholder engagement in transition phase programmes. Research respondents emphasised the importance of centring national transition plans on principles such as promoting inclusivity, creating meaningful employment, equitable resource distribution and power, preserving culture, upholding community voice and power, fair sharing of benefits and harm, and respect for indigenous and local community rights.
Another consensus emerging is a preference for a gradual transition that is not market-driven. Transitioning rapidly may lead to chaos and economic hardship in Africa, with spiralling effects on communities. What can be deduced from the community demands and expectations outlined here is that inclusion is paramount in energy transition in order to give effect to the needs of communities that will lose benefits19 when fossil fuels are phased out. In the green economy, these benefits must be replaced by new arrangements for equitable socioeconomic distribution of benefits of renewable energy resources and for empowering community voices. There must be provision of alternative livelihoods for local people, especially those engaged in artisanal refining. Energy transition cannot be just without these essential elements.
As this article has clearly demonstrated, the current energy transition is hardly a ‘Eureka!’ moment, especially for communities impacted by fossil fuels. Achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 will entail progressively phasing out and profoundly modifying Nigeria’s carbon-intensive economy (Ogbonna et al. 2023) while addressing the numerous barriers to the attainment of carbon neutrality, as well as restorative, distributive, and procedural justice. Among several barriers, low-carbon transition strategies in most developing countries – such as Nigeria – are top-down, without sufficient consideration of the poor (ibid.). In other words, there are still several dark areas that need addressing, refining, and rethinking to ensure that historical wrongdoings are not recycled in a new era.
At the global level, emphasis has been placed on extracting verbal commitments from countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop policies to address climate change. In reality, progress has stalled despite the numerous policy documents, plans, and strategies to accelerate the development and use of renewable energy in Nigeria, with missed short-term (2015) and mid-term (2020) targets and milestones (Adedokun et al. 2025). One hard lesson learned so far is that neither policy development nor policy reform is enough to translate assurances of restorative, distributive, and procedural justice into concrete benefits for local people. Nigeria, like other countries around the world, has rolled out numerous policy and legal frameworks, committing to targets, deadlines, and ambitions that neither align with its contextual realities nor reflect the social, economic, and cultural aspirations of its people. As a result, local voices and marginalised perspectives are not placed on the front burner of these climate targets and national policy developments. That needs to change.
As if that were not enough, new investments in renewable energy initiatives, such as lithium, show that investors are importing the environmental bad practices witnessed in the fossil-fuel era into green energy investments. Companies’ robust commitment to the sound environmental principles and best practices publicised on their websites has not been actioned, and proves that cosmetic statements and performative rhetoric are not enough to guarantee compliance with environmental regulations. Again, that needs to change.
Ample evidence also shows that policies alone are not enough to force the shifts in power dynamics, attitudes, practices, relationships, and governance. Policies need strong institutions that prioritise public engagement and participatory systems to work effectively. In the context of the energy industry, the major role of policies and strong institutions is to deter bad behaviour, both from state and non-state actors, especially corporations. The combined forces of policy and institutions are necessary to curb the excesses of investors/companies that feast on the ignorance of communities, exploiting their technical knowledge deficit to negotiate deals and execute agreements that offer a pittance to local populations. Beyond guaranteeing procedural justice, strong institutions need to further ensure that developers and businesses comply with all environmental safeguards and adhere to the terms of fairly negotiated community benefit agreements. Procedural justice is assured when violations of policy prescriptions, including agreements, are met with penalties enforced by strong institutions without fear or favour. Implementing new measures to improve energy efficiency must balance economic considerations with a respect for community land and cultural rights.
This cannot be emphasised enough: the absence of environmental accountability for decades of fossil-fuel-linked land degradation is a major obstacle to a smooth energy transition, while shutting the door against restorative justice. Creating equitable systems that address historical injustices is particularly imperative given that agitations for environmental clean-ups, reparations, and restoration of land have continued with minimal results and broken promises. Allowing oil and gas companies to sell their onshore businesses while the enormous harm caused by the same business operations persists is a red flag that discourages community support for energy transition. The widespread perception across communities is that divestments are merely avenues for multinational corporations to escape liability from the litany of environmental injustices in the Niger Delta.
1 This issue of the IDS Bulletin was supported in part by a Ford Foundation grant entitled ‘Learning at the Intersections of Just Transitions: Spaces for Engagement, Voices from the Margins and Cross-Sectoral Alliances in Resource-Rich Countries of the Global South’. The British Academy also provided earlier support for the project ‘Making Space for Dialogue on Just Transitions in Africa’s Oil and Gas Producing Regions’ (2022) which helped to lay the foundation for much of this work. The opinions expressed are the authors’ own and do not reflect the views of the funders.
2 Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, Executive Director, Spaces for Change (S4C), Nigeria.
3 ₦ = Naira, Nigerian currency.
4 See Nigeria’s Climate Change Act.
5 The World Bank defines ‘gas flaring’ as the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction. Associated gas is wastefully flared for reasons including market and economic constraints, a lack of infrastructure to capture the gas, the absence of effective and enforced regulations, and a lack of priority by field operators. See World Bank (n.d.).
6 ‘An oil well blowout is when crude oil is released uncontrollably and accidentally from the well’ (Petrochemical, Chemical and Energy n.d.).
7 S4C implemented JTLP in partnership with the UK-based Institute of Development Studies (IDS). The project was implemented as a sub-award from IDS’ grant from the Ford Foundation in respect of the ‘Learning at the Intersections of Just Transitions: Spaces for Engagement, Voices from the Margins and Cross-Sectoral Alliances in Resource-Rich Countries of the Global South’ project.
8 Funded by the British Academy and implemented by S4C and IDS.
9 S4C and IDS, one-day symposium, 25 October 2023.
10 Interview with ex-Rivers State Commissioner for Energy, January 2022.
11 See Sections 11, 20, 33, and 34 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (Federal Government of Nigeria 1999), reinforced by Articles 4, 16, and 24 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Union 1981). See also Gbemre v. SPDC (2005).
12 S4C and IDS, one-day symposium, 25 October 2023.
13 See Land Use Act 1978.
14 The Lekki Free Trade Zone Project is an example. Consultation of the nine affected communities commenced during the site construction stage. The lack of detailed and clear information on the intent and purpose of the project, as well as the non‑participation of affected community members in the planning process triggered fear, hesitation, and resistance. Project companies were denied access to the community lands (S4C 2016).
15 Focus group discussion with Eleme community leader in Rivers State.
16 S4C and IDS, one-day symposium, 25 October 2023.
17 Kilo-volt-amperes.
18 These discussions were held under the British Academy-funded project, Making Space for Dialogue on Just Transitions in Africa’s Oil and Gas Producing Regions, which identified challenges, enabling conditions, and entry points for ensuring inclusive deliberation on what a just transition would look like for the citizens of oil- and gas-producing regions in sub‑Saharan Africa. The project was implemented by S4C and IDS.
19 These include benefit-sharing arrangements such as 13 per cent derivation, petroleum host community development trusts, company CSR initiatives, kpo-fire business/artisanal refining, and so on.
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© 2025 The Author. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2025.139 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited and any modifications or adaptations are indicated.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 56 No. 2 November 2025 ‘Struggles for Justice in the Energy Transition: Voices from the Front Lines’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.