Petroleum Sovereignty and Natural Resource Constitutionalism in Nigeria: A Critical Theoretical Inquiry

This study conducts a critical theoretical inquiry into the concept of petroleum sovereignty within Nigeria's constitutional framework, examining the tension between the federal state's ownership of petroleum resources under Section 44(3) of the 1999 Constitution and the legitimate claims of oil-producing communities to benefit from resources extracted from their territories. Drawing on resource constitutionalism theory, political philosophy literature on distributive justice, and critical legal theory, the research develops an original analytical framework for assessing how constitutional petroleum ownership norms are constructed, contested, and reformulated in Nigeria's legal and political discourse. The methodology combines constitutional doctrinal analysis, critical discourse analysis of legislative debates on the PIA 2021, and deep qualitative interviews with twenty constitutional law scholars and twenty community rights advocates from the South South and North Central zones. Comparative constitutional analysis draws on Bolivia's model of constitutionalised resource sovereignty and Ecuador's rights of nature constitutional provisions. Findings challenge the prevailing statist interpretation of petroleum sovereignty and develop a communitarian constitutionalism counter-framework. The study makes an original theoretical contribution to petroleum law, constitutional theory, and resource justice scholarship. Keywords: petroleum sovereignty, resource constitutionalism, Nigeria, distributive justice, PIA 2021.