The Quandary on Water Pollution in Nigeria’s Niger Delta: an Environmental Ethical Analysis

The Niger Delta region has suffered environmental degradation since the discovery of oil in the region. Oil exploration in the region has not been of much benefit to the local communities. It has rather been a source of agony and anguish for them. Farmlands which were hitherto fertile for sufficient food production and bumper yields for the populace have become highly infertile due to oil spills and gas flares. Creeks and rivers that used to serve as their main channel of getting protein diets through fish and other sea foods have all become covered with oil films causing accelerated extermination of aquatic lives. This paper sets out to explore the activities of oil exploration in the Niger Delta, the problem of water pollution caused by oil as well as the impacts on their environment and its people. It proposes that both the oil companies and indigent citizens should be environmental ethically concerned. We also argue for the enactment of adequate laws and legislations that could govern oil exploration and exploitation in Nigeria, and then examine a few ways that environmental degradation in the Niger Delta can be solved. The approach used is the expository and contextual analytical methods.