The Right To A Healthy Environment in Nigeria: Illusion Or Reality?

       The environment is essential to human survival, and its protection has increasingly been recognized as part of human rights. Across the world, international instruments such as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the 2022 United Nations General Assembly resolution affirm the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. These developments reflect a growing understanding that human dignity cannot be separated from environmental quality.

       In Nigeria, however, the right to a healthy environment remains uncertain. Section 20 of the 1999 Constitution mandates the state to protect and improve the environment and safeguard land, air, water, forests, and wildlife. In addition, laws such as the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency Act and the Environmental Impact Assessment Act seek to regulate environmental practices. Despite this legal framework, persistent problems such as oil spills in the Niger Delta, pollution, deforestation, and poor waste management raise serious questions about whether Nigerians genuinely enjoy this right in practice. The reality suggests that while the right exists in law, it remains largely unrealized.

      The concept of the right to a healthy environment brings together two important ideas: the environment and human rights. The environment, as recognized in Nigerian law and academic writing, includes land, water, air, living organisms, and the relationships between them. Human well-being is therefore inseparably linked to environmental quality. Scholars have argued that a clean environment is not a luxury but a foundation upon which other rights, such as the right to life and dignity, depend. Human rights themselves are fundamental freedoms inherent in every individual, and modern classifications place the right to a healthy environment among third-generation rights, alongside rights to development and peace.

        International law strongly supports this position. Article 24 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights provides that all peoples are entitled to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development. The United Nations has also affirmed that human rights cannot be fully enjoyed in a degraded or polluted environment. Although the Nigerian Constitution does not expressly list the right to a healthy environment as a fundamental right, Nigeria’s domestication of the African Charter gives this right legal force within the country.

    Judicial decisions have played a crucial role in shaping the enforcement of environmental rights in Nigeria. In Gbemre v. Shell Petroleum Dev. Corp & the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (1), the Federal High Court held that gas flaring violated the community’s constitutionally guaranteed rights to life and dignity under Sections 33 and 34 of the 1999 Constitution, and that these rights implicitly guarantee a clean, healthy, and pollution-free environment. The court found that the failure to conduct Environmental Impact Assessments amounted to a violation of these rights.

       Similarly, in Centre for Oil Pollution Watch (COPW) v. NNPC (2), the Supreme Court allowed an NGO to institute an action in the public interest. The Court recognized environmental protection as enforceable through the rights to life and dignity, linking environmental harm directly to threats to human survival. This decision marked a significant shift from earlier judicial reluctance to treat environmental rights as justiciable.

       Despite these judicial developments, several challenges continue to hinder effective enforcement. Section 20 of the Constitution remains non-justiciable, regulatory agencies suffer from weak capacity and corruption, and public awareness of environmental rights is low. Technical barriers such as restrictive rules on locus standi, heavy burdens of proof, and jurisdictional constraints further frustrate victims of environmental harm. The courts have repeatedly emphasized the importance of jurisdiction in cases such as Okonkwo v. Ngige (3), CBN v. Okojie (4), and Ohakim v. Agbaso (5), yet many courts remain hesitant to boldly exercise jurisdiction in environmental matters, with Gbemre v. Shell (6) standing as a rare exception.

       Ultimately, protecting the right to a healthy environment in Nigeria requires more than written laws. Indigenous practices such as mangrove restoration and sustainable farming methods demonstrate that practical solutions already exist. Stronger enforcement, greater accountability, and the integration of local knowledge into environmental governance can help bridge the gap between legal recognition and lived reality. Until then, the right to a healthy environment in Nigeria remains more an aspiration than a guarantee..

1. Unreported suit No. FHC/B/CS/53/05

2. (2019) 5 NWLR (PT. 1666) 518

3.  (2007) Vol.151 LRCN 1

4. 2015) Vol.250 LRCN 44

5.  (2011) ALL FWLR (PT.553) 1806 

6. Supra n.1