Environmental Degradation in Nigeria: The Challenges of Peaceful Co-existence

Abstract

To carry out the effective study, management, and analysis of every conflict, the situation requires a proper understanding of both the remote and immediate causes of conflict before a sustainable solution can be achieved. Most conflict situations in Nigeria are not natural but more of a human creation. This study examines environmental sociology, the challenges of poor environmental management and their associated effects on economic and food security, dwindling plant life, land, and water resources, increasing social conflicts, and migration.

Nearly all the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria are entangled with environmentally generated communal conflict. The situation in the North North Central region ranges from desertification, coupled and aggravated by poor land management. The consequences include competition for the limited green spaces between farmers and cattle herders, depletion of grazing zones, restrictions of the farming land to a few available riverine areas, intensive heat, among other challenges.

In the southeast, gully erosion is taking its toll on the loss of land and ancestral family properties. Improper agricultural methods, solid mineral resources exploration, and other human activities add to the devastation. The implication is the loss of farming land and this diminishes food production. Inadequate measures to curtail gully erosion often lead to poor execution and the expensive cost of construction and developmental projects. Erosion also promotes rural-urban drift due to a lack of opportunities as valuable lands are being eroded. A situation such as this may give the opportunity for those parts of the country seeking to break away.

South-south environmental challenges are the most prominent, because of the strategic and economic value of the region. Gas flaming, the dredging of larger rivers, and oil spillage, all affect the local communities through the by-products of these activities, including polluted water, infertile farmland, loss of biodiversity, and sometimes total displacement of communities.

The development in the southwest can be attributed to ineffective town planning law and building arrangements, as the water erosion disaster is causing loss of life and property abandonment. The structural development on the receding coastline and the buildup of marine waste cannot be overlooked. The land grabbers’ syndrome is a result of a lack of a transparent legal process for land acquisition.

The objective of this study is to seek the patterns and trends in environmental-related conflicts in Nigeria.