Social Work and Economic Inequality in Nigeria’s Oil-Rich Delta States: Critical Political Economy and Transformative Practice

Economic inequality in Nigeria's oil-rich Delta States is a structural paradox in which resource wealth coexists with extreme poverty, displacement, and environmental degradation, creating a mandate for critical political economy-informed social work that has yet to be theoretically elaborated. This doctoral study applies critical political economy analysis to economic inequality in Nigeria's Delta States (Rivers, Bayelsa, and Delta) and develops a transformative social work practice framework responsive to oil economy structural contradictions. A critical transformative paradigm employing political economy analysis methodology underpins the study, combining secondary analysis of inequality indicators, 50 qualitative interviews with community welfare actors and social workers, and participatory economic mapping with 10 community organisations in oil-producing host communities. Critical discourse analysis and political economy analytical procedures are applied. The study's original theoretical contribution is the Oil Economy Social Work Framework, which identifies five structural mechanisms, including resource curse dynamics, environmental dispossession, corporate welfare substitution, elite capture of welfare transfers, and community social fragmentation, through which oil economy structures produce social welfare need and constrain professional social work responses. The study argues that transformative social work practice in oil-producing communities requires structural economic analysis as a core professional competency. Keywords: economic inequality, oil economy, critical political economy, social work, Delta States