Energy Sovereignty and Resource Justice in Nigeria’s Niger Delta: Critical Perspectives on the Energy Transition

Nigeria's energy transition narrative emphasises macro-level decarbonisation objectives and technology deployment metrics while largely overlooking the energy sovereignty claims and resource justice grievances of communities in the Niger Delta whose territories have been transformed by petroleum extraction with minimal local energy access benefit, raising critical questions about whose transition and toward what ends. This study develops an original theoretical framework of Energy Sovereignty and Resource Justice and applies it empirically to communities in Bayelsa, Rivers, and Delta States to examine how the energy transition is experienced, contested, and reimagined from the perspective of resource-affected communities. The research employs a critical participatory action research methodology over 24 months, involving 130 community participants in five Niger Delta communities in co-investigating their own energy histories, current access conditions, and transition aspirations. Data generation methods include participatory energy mapping, oral history collection, collaborative policy analysis, and deliberative workshops producing community transition visions. Critical discourse analysis, intersectional analysis, and political ecology frameworks are applied to interpret findings. The study's principal theoretical contribution is an Energy Sovereignty Framework for Resource-Affected Communities specifying six dimensions of sovereignty claims: territorial energy rights, local content in transition industries, environmental reparations, community consent in project siting, benefit-sharing institutions, and knowledge co-production. Empirical findings demonstrate profound contradictions between official energy transition narratives and Niger Delta community experiences and aspirations, including exclusion from renewable energy investment flows despite hosting the revenues that finance them. Keywords: energy sovereignty, resource justice, Niger Delta, energy transition, participatory action research.