Living with Oil: Towards an Ethics of the Environment in the Niger Delta

Abstract

The vital issues and problems of sustaining the environment for the ever expanding population of mankind are as philosophical as they are ethical. Scholars have in various ways agreed that the issues of resource allocation and the responsibility for both human and non-human components of nature are indeed wholly ethical. However, in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, where the resources that cater for whole nation are tapped or come from, the ethical dimensions have not been deeply investigated, applied or considered towards solving the multifarious crisis that have engulfed that region. The major factor of this crisis is the prevalence of disaffected youths in the area who are involved in militant activism to redress perceived injustice done to them and their environment. Majority of these youths were born and grew up under the military era and so have internalized the culture of violence. Since the amalgamation of 1914, what emerged as the Niger Delta has received wider attention and witnessed  more crisis. The problem here is a complex one as it involves human and non –human components that have been exploited, despoiled and depraved. So, it is necessary that an ethical approach be adopted to attempt to proffer solutions to the Niger Delta crisis what we intend to do in this work therefore is to evolve an ethics of the Niger Delta environment which is aimed at looking at the moral angle of the problems as a way of providing solutions.

Key Words: Living, Oil, Ethics, Environment