Capability Approach and Adult Education as Human Development in the Niger Delta Region

This study applied Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's capability approach as a theoretical framework for reconceptualising adult education as human development in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, encompassing Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, and Rivers States. Dominant instrumentalist framings of adult education in Nigerian policy discourse reduce its value to economic productivity contributions, obscuring its broader role in expanding human freedoms, substantive agency, and dignified living. The capability approach offers a theoretically richer alternative that evaluates adult education's contribution to the full range of human capabilities required for a life of genuine flourishing. The study employed a critical theoretical methodology combining philosophical analysis of capability approach foundations and their adult education applications, interpretive policy analysis of Niger Delta adult education provision across six states, and capability narrative interviews with 48 adult education participants and 20 development scholars. Analysis demonstrated that existing adult education programmes in the Niger Delta were capability-narrow, primarily addressing literacy and numeracy capabilities while neglecting affiliation, bodily integrity, emotional development, play, political control, and environmental capabilities identified in Nussbaum's Central Capabilities list. Communities most severely affected by oil pollution demonstrated the greatest divergence between formal adult education provision and actual capability development needs. The study develops an original Niger Delta Capability-Based Adult Education Framework specifying adult education programme design principles derived from regional capability priorities. This constitutes a significant theoretical and policy contribution to capability-informed adult education development in conflict-affected resource contexts. Keywords: capability approach, adult education, human development, Niger Delta, Sen and Nussbaum.