Theorising Environmental Sacrifice Zones and Ecological Debt in Nigeria’s Petroleum Producing Region

The concept of environmental sacrifice zones, designating areas systematically subjected to concentrated environmental harm in service of national or global economic interests, provides a powerful but theoretically underdeveloped framework for understanding the historical and continuing environmental dispossession of Niger Delta communities in Nigeria's South South geopolitical zone across more than six decades of petroleum extraction. This study theorises the production and perpetuation of environmental sacrifice zones in Nigeria's oil-producing region and develops the concept of ecological debt as an analytical and normative instrument for quantifying and addressing historical environmental injustice. The theoretical contribution integrates political ecology, environmental justice theory, post-colonial economics, and critical race geography to construct a multi-scalar framework positioning Niger Delta contamination as the outcome of deliberate state and corporate territorialisation strategies that reproduce colonial resource extraction logics. Empirical research combines extensive archival analysis of colonial petroleum concession agreements, post-independence oil legislation, DPR enforcement records, and Shell and Chevron environmental compliance documents with 18 months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork across Ogoni, Ijaw, Isoko, and Urhobo communities. Ecosystem service loss quantification using spatially explicit methods estimates the historical ecological debt owed to Niger Delta communities. Community tribunal testimonies, environmental litigation records, and transnational advocacy networks are analysed as sites of counter-hegemonic geographical knowledge production. Results demonstrate that sacrifice zone production in the Niger Delta was not incidental but was institutionally constructed through specific legal, fiscal, and regulatory instruments that concentrated harm while distributing benefits to national and international actors. This study makes a foundational theoretical contribution to political ecology and environmental justice geography in sub-Saharan Africa. Keywords: sacrifice zones, ecological debt, political ecology, Niger Delta, South South Nigeria.