International Law, State Responsibility, and the Governance of Multinational Corporations in Nigeria’s Oil Sector

This dissertation provides an original analysis of the international law and state responsibility frameworks governing multinational corporation conduct in Nigeria's oil sector, developing a new theory of corporate accountability in post-colonial resource governance contexts that integrates international law, historical institutionalism, and political economy analysis. The governance of multinational oil corporations in the Niger Delta has generated some of the most consequential international human rights and environmental law cases of the past three decades, yet the theoretical framework for understanding state responsibility in this context remains underdeveloped. The dissertation employs a mixed doctrinal and empirical methodology, combining systematic analysis of 250 relevant international law instruments, decisions, and scholarly commentaries with historical case analysis of five landmark oil governance disputes including the Ogoni case, the Bodo oil spill litigation, and the Wiwa v. Shell settlement, and primary research involving 55 interviews with international law practitioners, Nigerian government officials, oil company legal counsel, and community legal advocates. International legal theory, the Post-Colonial Governance Framework, and the Corporate Accountability Theory provide the analytical anchors. The dissertation proposes the State-Corporate Complicity Theory of Resource Governance, which specifies the conditions under which state conduct transforms from regulatory failure into international law violations through active facilitation of corporate harm. Keywords: international law, state responsibility, multinational corporations, Niger Delta, corporate accountability.