A Political Ecology of Oil Resource Governance and Environmental Degradation in the Western Niger Delta

Political ecology offers a powerful analytical framework for interrogating the power relations, institutional arrangements, and knowledge politics that shape environmental outcomes in resource extraction contexts, yet its application to Nigeria's petroleum governance system requires theoretically grounded adaptation to the state's distinctive federal-subnational dynamics. This doctoral research develops a political ecological analysis of oil resource governance and environmental degradation in the western Niger Delta, covering Delta and Edo states, deploying extended ethnographic fieldwork, multi-sited case study methodology, and critical discourse analysis. Fieldwork conducted over fourteen months across six case study communities and in regulatory, corporate, and civil society institutional settings generates a rich qualitative dataset from 90 semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis of regulatory records, environmental impact assessments, and community compensation claims. The political ecology analysis reveals that environmental degradation outcomes are produced through the intersection of four structural mechanisms: regulatory capture of environmental agencies by oil sector interests, discursive framing of environmental damage as technical rather than political, fragmentation of community voice through elite co-optation, and international certification systems that provide legitimacy without ecological accountability. The research makes an original theoretical contribution by developing the concept of layered extractive sovereignty to describe the multi-level governance arrangement in which environmental accountability is systematically diffused. Methodological contributions include a framework for conducting institutional ethnography in high-stakes extractive contexts in Africa. Policy contributions address governance reform pathways and structural conditions for meaningful environmental accountability. Keywords: political ecology, oil governance, Niger Delta, extractive sovereignty, environmental accountability.