Can Environmental Harm Amount To A Violation Of Fundamental Rights In Nigeria?

Environmental pollution is often treated as a regulatory problem. An oil company spills crude oil. A regulator investigates. Compensation may follow. A clean-up may be ordered. But what happens when pollution goes beyond property damage and begins to threaten people’s health, dignity, livelihood and survival? Can environmental harm amount to a violation of fundamental rights in Nigeria? 

Nigeria’s Constitution does not expressly guarantee a standalone environmental right

Section 20 of the 1999 Constitution directs the State to protect and improve Nigeria’s environment.

It is an important constitutional provision. However, it is located in Chapter II rather than Chapter IV, where Nigeria’s expressly enforceable fundamental rights are found.

Among the Chapter IV rights are the right to life in section 33 and the right to dignity in section 34. Section 46 provides the constitutional mechanism for enforcing Chapter IV rights.

This creates a legal problem. If environmental pollution is not itself listed as a fundamental right, how can an affected community bring an environmental claim as a human rights claim?

One answer is to demonstrate that the environmental harm interferes with an existing fundamental right.

Key Legal Precedents

• Gbemre v Shell: The court ruled that living in a severely polluted environment directly undermines human life and dignity.
• Opara v Shell: The appellate court established that not every environmental dispute qualifies as a fundamental rights claim.
• COPW v NNPC: The Supreme Court recognised that environmental harm intersects with human rights and granted standing to public interest litigants.

The African Charter adds another dimension

Nigeria has domesticated the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Article 24 provides for the right of peoples to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development.

However, the precise enforceability of Charter rights against private companies remains contested. The 2025 Alame judgment considered the Nigerian authorities and concluded that the Charter’s obligations were not presently enforceable horizontally against private companies under Nigerian appellate authority.

The question is therefore still open

Environmental harm can certainly produce consequences that affect human rights. The more difficult question is whether those consequences can be enforced directly as constitutional or Charter rights against the particular defendant. That distinction will continue to shape Nigerian environmental litigation.

It is against this uncertainty that Olisa Agbakoba Legal is advocating for an amendment to Chapter IV to expressly recognise protection from oil pollution as a fundamental right, alongside a review of the domestication of the African Charter to strengthen the enforceability of the right to a healthy environment guaranteed under Article 24.